Chapters and speeches on the Irish land question

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CHAPTERS

SPEECHES

IRISH LAND QUESTION.

Ex Libria
C. K. OGDEN

CHAPTERS

AMD

SPEECHES

lEISI LAND QUESTION

BT

JOHN STUART MILL

KBPKINTED FROM " PRINaPLKS OF POLITICAL KOOKOMy"

AND Hansard's debates.

SECOND EDITION.

LONDON

LONGMANS, GREEN, READER, AND DYER

1870

HD

z' 2 ^ PNIVERSTTY OF C/ T TFORNIA

^'^^ SANTA BARBARA

M5

OF PEASANT PEOPKIETOES.

PART I.

§ 1. In the regime of peasant properties, as in that of slavery,
the whole produce belongs to a single owner, and the distinction of
rent, profits, and wages, does not exist. In all other respects, the
two states of society are the extreme opposites of each other. The
one is the state of greatest oppression and degradation to the labour-
ing class. The other is that in which they are the most uncontrolled
arbiters of their own lot.

The advantage, however, of small properties in land, is one of
the most disputed questions in the range of political economy. On
the Continent, though there are some dissentients from the prevail-
ing opinion, the benefit of having a numerous proprietary population
exists in the minds of most people in the form of an axiom. But
English authorities are either unaware of the judgment of Conti-
nental agrictdturists, or are content to put it aside, on the plea of
their having no experience of large properties in favourable cir-
cumstances : the advantage of large properties being only felt where
there are also large farms ; and as this, in arable districts, implies
a greater accumulation of capital than usually exists on the Con-
tinent, the great Continental estates, except in the case of grazing
farms, are mostly let out for cultivation in small portions. There
is some truth in this ; but the arg\iment admits of being retorted ;
for if the Continent knows little, by experience, of cultivation on
a large scale and by large capital, the generality of English
writers are no better acqxiainted practically with peasant pro-

E PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

prietors, and have almost always the most erroneous ideas of
their social condition and mode of life. Yet the old traditions
even of England are on the same side with the general opinion of
the Continent. The " yeomanry" who were vaunted as the glory
of England while they existed, and have been so much mourned
over since they disappeared, were either small proprietors or small
farmers, and if they were mostly the last, the character they b6re
for sturdy independence is the more noticeable. There is a part of
England, unfortunately a very small part, where peasant proprietors
are still common ; for such are the " statesmen" of Cumberland and
Westmoreland, though they pay, I believe, generally if not univer-
sally, certain customary dues, which, being fixed, no more affect
their character of proprietors than the land-tax does. There is
but one voice, among those acquainted with the country, on the
admirable efiects of this tenure of land in those counties. No
other agricultural population in England could have furnished the
originals of Wordsworth's peasantry.*

* In Mr. Wordsworth's little descriptive work on the scenery of the Lakes,
he speaks of the upper part of the dales as having heen for centuries " a perfect
republic of shepherds and agriculturists, proprietors, for the most part, of the
lands which they occupied and cultivated. The plough of each man was con-
fined to the maintenance of his own family, or to the occasional accommodation of
his neighbour. Two or three cows furnished each family with milk and cheese.
The chapel was the only edifice that presided over these dwellings, the supreme
head of this pure commonwealth ; the members of which existed in the midst of
a powerful empire, like an ideal society, or an organized community, whose con-
stitution had been imposed and regulated by the mountains which protected it.
Neither high-born nobleman, knight, nor esquire was here ; but many of these
humble sons of the hills had a consciousness that the land which they walked
over and tilled had for more than five hundred years been possessed by men of
their name and blood. . . . Corn was grown in these vales suflBcient upon each
estate to furnish bread for each family, no more. The storms and moisture of
the climate induced them to sprinkle their upland property with outhouses of
native stone, as places of shelter for their sheep, where, in tempestuous weather,
food was distributed to them. Every family spun from its own flock the wool
with which it was clothed ; a weaver was here and there found among them, and
the rest of their wants was supplied by the produce of the yarn, which they carded
and spun in their own houses, and carried to market either under their arms, or
more frequeutly on packhorses, a small train taking their way weekly down the
valley, or over the mountains, to the most commodious town." — A Description of
the Scenery of the Lakes in the North of England, 3rd edit. pp. 50 to 53 and
63 to 65. '

FEASANT PROPRIETORS. 3

The general system, however, of English cultivation, affording no
experience to render the nature and operation of peasant properties
familiar, and Englishmen being in general profoundly ignorant of
the agricultural economy of other countries, the very idea of
peasant proprietors is strange to the English mind, and does not
easily find access to it. Even the forms of language stand in the
way : the familiar designation for owners of land being " landlords,"
a term to which " tenants" is always understood as a correlative.
When, at the time of the famine, the suggestion of peasant proper-
ties as a means of Irish improvement found its way into parliamen-
tary and newspaper discussions, there were writers of pretension to
whom the word "proprietor" was so far from conveying any dis-
tinct idea, that they mistook the small holdings of Irish cottier
tenants for peasant properties. The subject being so little under-
stood, I think it important, before entering into the theory of it, to
do something towards showing how the case stands as to matter of
fact ; by exhibiting, at greater length than woiild otherwise be ad-
missible, some of the testimony which exists respecting the state of
cultivation, and the comfort and happiness of the cultivators, in
those countries and parts of countries, in which the greater part of
the land has neither landlord nor farmer, other than the labourer
who tills the soil.

§ 2. I lay no stress on the condition of North America, where, as
is well known, the land, wherever free from the curse of slavery,
is almost universally owned by the same person who holds the
plough. A country combining the natural fertility of America
with the knowledge and arts of modern Europe, is so peculiarly
circumstanced, that scarcely anything, except insecurity of property
or a tyrannical government, could materially impair the prosperity
of the industrious classes. I might, with Sismondi, insist more
strongly on the case of ancient Italy, especially Latium, that Cam-
pagna which then swarmed with inhbitan ts in the very regions
which under a contrary regime have become uninhabitable from
malaria. But I prefer taking the evidence of the same writer on
things known to him by personal observation.

b2

4 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

"It is especially Switzerland," says M. de Sismondi, "which
should be traversed and studied to judge of the happiness of peasant
proprietors. It is from Switzerland we learn that agriculture, prac-
tised by the very persons who enjoy its fruits, suffices to procure
great comfort for a very numerous population ; a great independence
of character, arising from independence of position ; a great commerce
of consumption, the residt of. the easy circumstances of all the in-
habitants, even in a country whose climate is rude, whose soil is
but moderately fertile, and where late frosts and inconstancy of
seasons often blight the hopes of the cultivator. It is impossible
to see without admiration those timber houses of the poorest peasant,
so vast, so well closed in, so covered with carvings. In the interior,
spacious corridors separate the different chambers of the numerous
family ; each chamber has but one bed, which is abundantly fur-
nished with curtains, bedclothes, and the whitest linen ; carefully
kept furniture surrounds it ; the wardrobes are filled with linen ;
the dairy is vast, well aired, and of exquisite cleanness ; under the
same roof is a great provision of com, salt meat, cheese and wood ;
in the cow-houses are the finest and most carefully tended cattle in
Europe ; the garden is planted with flowers, both men and women
are cleanly and warmly clad, the women preserve with pride their
ancient costume ; all carry in their faces the impress of health and
strength. Let other nations boast of their opulence, Switzerland
may always point with pride to her peasants."*

The same eminent writer thus expresses his opinions on peasant
proprietorship in general,

" Wherever we find peasant proprietors, we also find the comfort,
security, confidence in the future, and independence, which assure
at once happiness and virtue. The peasant who with his children
does all the work of his little inheritance, who pays no rent to any
one above him, nor wages to any one below, who regulates his pro-
duction by his consumption, who eats his own corn, drinks his own
wine, is clothed in his own hemp and wool, cares little for the prices
of the market ; for he has little to sell and little to buy, and is never

• Studies in Political Economy, Essay III.

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 5

mined by revulsions of trade. Instead of fearing for the future, he
sees it in the colours of hope ; for he employs every moment not
required by the labours of the year, on something profitable to his
children and to future generations. A few minutes' work suffices
him to plant the seed which in a hundred years will be a large tree,
to dig the channel which will conduct to him a spring of fresh
water, to improve by cares often repeated, but stolen from odd
times, all the species of animals and vegetables which surround him.
His little patrimony is a true savings bank, always ready to receive
all his little gains and utilize all his moments of leisure. The
ever-acting power of nature returns them a hundred-fold. The
peasant has a lively sense of the happiness attached to the condition
of a proprietor. Accordingly he is always eager to buy land at any
price. He pays more for it than its value, more perhaps than it
will bring him in ; but is he not right in estimating highly the ad-
vantage of having always an advantageous investment for his labour,
without underbidding in the wages -market — of being always able
to find bread, without the necessity of buying it at a scarcity
price ?

" The peasant proprietor is of all cultivators the one who gets
most from the soil, for he is the one who thinks most of the future,
and who has been most instructed by experience. He is also the one
who employs the human powers to most advantage, because dividing
his occupations among all the members of his family, he reserves
some for every day of the year, so that nobody is ever out of work.
Of all cultivators he is the happiest, and at the same time the land
nowhere occupies, and feeds amply without becoming exhausted, so
many inhabitants as where they are proprietors. Finally, of all cul-
tivators the peasant proprietor is the one who gives most encourage-
ment to commerce and manufactures, because he is the richest."*

* And in another work (New Principles of Political Economy, book iii.
chap. 3) he says, " When we traverse nearly the whole of Switzerland, and
several provinces of France, Italy, and Germany, we need never ask, in looking
at any piece of land, if it belongs to a peasant proprietor or to a farmer. The
intelligent care, the enjoyments provided ibr the labourer, the adornment wliieh
the country has received from his hands, are clear indications of the former. It

6 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

This picture of unwearied assiduity, and what may be called
affectionate interest in the land, is borne out in regard to the more
intelligent Cantons of Switzerland by English observers, "In
walking anywhere in the neighbourhood of Zurich," says Mr. Inglis,
" in looking to the right or to the left, one is struck with the ex-
traordinary industry of the inhabitants ; and if we learn that a
proprietor here has a return of ten per cent, we are inclined to
say, * he deserves it.' I speak at present of country labour, though
I believe that in every kind of trade also, the people of Zurich are
remarkable for their assiduity ; but in the industry they show in
the cultivation of their land I may safely say they are unrivalled.
When I used to open my casement between four and five in the
morning to look out upon the lake and the distant Alps, I saw the
labourer in the fields ; and when I returned from an evening
walk, long after sunset, as late, perhaps, as half-past eight, there
was the labourer, mowing his grass, or tying up his vines. . . .
It is impossible to look at a field, a garden, a hedging, scarcely even
a tree, a flower, or a vegetable, without perceiving proofs of the
extreme care and industry that are bestowed upon the cultivation
of the soil. If for example, a path leads through, or by the side of,
a field of grain, the corn is not, as in England, permitted to hang
over the path, exposed to be pulled or trodden down by every passer-
by ; it is everywhere bounded by a fence, stakes are placed at
intervals of about a yard, and about two or three feet from the
ground, boughs of trees are passed longitudinally along. If you look
into a field towards evening, where there are large beds of cauli-

is true, an oppressive government may destroy the comfort and brutify the
intelligence which should be the result of property ; taxation may abstract the
best produce of the fields, the insolence of government oflScers may disturb the
security of the peasant, the impossibility of obtaining justice against a powerful
neighbour may sow discouragement in his mind, and in the fine country which
has been given back to the administration of the King of Sardinia, the pro-
prietor, equally with the day-labourer, wears thelivery of indigence." He was
here speaking of Savoy, where the peasitnts were generally proprietors, and,
according to authentic accounts, extremely miserable. But, as M. de Sismondi
continues, " it is in vain to observe only one of the rules of political economy j
it cannot by itself suffice to produce good; but at least it diminishes evil."

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 7

flower or cabbage, you will find that every single plant has been
watered. In the gardens, which around Zurich are extremely large,
the most punctilious care is evinced in every production that grows.
The vegetables are planted with seemingly mathematical accuracy ;
not a single weed is to be seen, not a single stone. Plants are not
earthed up as with us, but are planted in a small hollow, into each of
which a little manure is put, and each plant is watered daily.
Where seeds are sown, the earth directly above is broken into the
finest powder ; every shrub, every flower is tied to a stake, and
where there is wall-fruit a trellice is erected against the wall, to
which the boughs are fastened, and there is not a single thing that
has not its appropriate resting place."*

Of one of the remote valleys of the High Alps the same writer
thus expresses himself :| —

" In the whole of the Engadine the land belongs to the peasantry,
who, like the inhabitants of every other place where this state of
things exists, vary greatly in the extent of their possessions. . .
Generally speaking, an Engadine peasant lives entirely upon the
produce of his land, with the exception of the few articles of foreign
growth required in his family, such aa coffee, sugar, and wine.
Flax is grown, prepared, spun, and woven, without ever leaving
his house. He has also his own wool, which is converted into a blue
coat, without passing through the hands of either the dyer or the
tailor. The country is incapable of greater cultivation than it has
received. All has been done for it that industry and an extreme
love of gain can devise. There is not a foot of waste land in the
Engadine, the lowest part of which is not much lower than the top
of Snowdon. Wherever grass wUl grow, there it is; wherever
a rock will bear a blade, verdure is seen upon it ; wherever an ear
of rye will ripen, there it is to be found. Barley and oats have
also their appropriate spots ; and wherever it is possible to ripen a
little patch of wheat, the cultivation of it is attempted. In no

* Switzerlard, the South of France, and the Pyrenees, in 1830. By H. I).
Inglis. Vol.i. ch. 2.

t Ibid. ch. 8 and 10.

8 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

country in Europe will be found so few poor as in the Engadine.
In the village of Suss, which contains about six hundred in-
habitants, there is not a single individual who has not wherewithal
to live comfortably, not a single individual who is indebted to
others for one morsel that he eats."

Notwithstanding the general prosperity of the Swiss peasantry,
this total absence of pauperism and (it may almost be said) of
poverty, cannot be predicated of the whole country ; the largest and
richest canton, that of Berne, being an example of the contrary ; for
although, in the parts of it which are occupied by peasant pro-
prietors, their industry is as remarkable and their ease and comfort
as conspicuous as elsewhere, the canton is burthened with a nume-
rous pauper population, through the operation of the worst regulated
system of poor-law administration in Europe, except that of England
before the new Poor Law.* Nor is Switzerland in some other
respects a favourable example of all that peasant properties might
effect. There exists a series of statistical accounts of the
Swiss cantons, drawn uj^ mostly with great care and intelligence,
containing detailed information, of tolerably recent date, respecting
the condition of the land and of the people. From these, the sub-
division appears to be often so minute, that it can hardly be supposed
not to be excessive : and the indebtedness of the proprietors in the
flourishing canton of Zurich " borders," as the writer expresses it,
" on the incredible ;" so that " only the intensest industry, frugality,
temperance, and complete freedom of commerce enable them to
stand their ground, "f Yet the general conclusion deducible from

* There have been considerable changes in the Poor Lav administration
and legislation of the Canton of Berne since the sentence m the 'ext was written.
But I am not suiBcieutly acquainted with the nature and operation of these
changes to speak more particularly of them here.

f Historical, Geographical and Statistical Picture of Switserland. Part I.
Canton of Zurich. By Gerold Meyer Von Knonau, 1834 (pp. 80-1). There are
villages in Zurich, he adds, in which there is not a single property unmortgaged.
It does not, however, follow that each individual proprietor is deeply involved
because the aggregate mass of incumbrances is large. In the Canton of
Scbafifhausen, for instance, it is stated that the landed properties are almost uU
mortgaged, but rarely for more than one-half their registered vilue (Part XII.
Canton of Schaffhausen, by Edward Im-Thurn, 1840, p. 52), ind the mort-

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 9

these books is that since the beginning of the century, and concur-
rently with the subdivision of many great estates which belonged
to nobles or to the cantonal governments, there has been a striking
and rapid improvement in almost every department of agriculture,
as well as in the houses, the habits, and the food of the people.
The writer of the account of Thiirgau goes so far as to say, that
since the subdivision of the feudal estates into peasant properties,
it is not uncommon for a third or a fourth part of an estate to
produce as much grain, and support as many head of cattle, as the
whole estate did before.*

§ 3. One of the countries in which peasant proprietors are of
oldest date, and most numerous in proportion to the population, is
Norway. Of the social and economical condition of that country
an interesting account has been given by Mr. Laing. His testimony
in favour of small landed properties both there and elsewhere, is
given with great decision. I shall quote a few passages.

" If small proprietors are not good farmers, it is not from the
same cause here which we are told makes them so in Scotland —
indolence and want of exertion. The extent to which irrigation is
carried on in these glens and valleys shows a spirit of exertion and
co-operation'''' (I request particular attention to this point), "to
which the latter can show nothing similar. Hay being the principal
winter support of live stock, and both it and corn, as well as potatoes,
liable, from the shallow soil and powerful reflection of sunshine from
the rocks, to be burnt and withered up, the greatest exertions are made
to bring water from the head of each glen, along such a level as will
give the command of it to each farmer at the head of his fields.
This is done by leading it in wooden troughs (the half of a tree
roughly scooped) from the highest perennial stream among the hills,
through woods, across ravines, along the rocky, often perpendicular,
sides of the glens, and from this main trough giving a lateral one
to each farmer in passing the head of his farm. He distributes

gages are often for the improvement and enlargement of the estate. (Part
XVII. Canton of Thiirgau, by J. A. Pupikofer, 1837, p. 209.)
* Thurgau, p. 72.

10 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

this supply by moveable troughs among his fields; and at this
season waters feach rig successively with scoops like those used by
bleachers in watering cloth, laying his trough between every two
rigs. One would not believe, without seeing it, how very large an
extent of land is traversed expeditiously by these artificial showers.
The extent of the main troughs is very great. In one glen I walked
ten miles, and found it troughed on both sides : on one, the chain
is continued down the main valley for forty miles.* Those may be
bad farmers who do such things ; but they are not indolent, nor igno-
rant of the principle of working in concert, and keeping up esta-
blishments for common benefit. They are undoubtedly, in these
respects, far in advance of any community of cottars in our High-
land glens. They feel as proprietors, who receive the advantage
of their own exertions. The excellent state of the roads and
bridges is another proof that the country is inhabited by people who
have a common interest to keep them under repair. There are no
toUs."t

On the effects of peasant proprietorship on the Continent generally,
the same writer expresses himself as follows.^

" If we listen to the large farmer, the scientific agriculturist,
the " [English] " political economist, good farming must perish
with large farms ; the very idea that good farming can exist, unless
on large farms cultivated with great capital, they hold to be absurd.

* Reichensperger {The Land Question) quoted by Mr. Kay, (Social Condition
and Education of the People in England and Europe) observes, " that the parts
of Europe where the most extensive and costly plans for watering the meadows
and lands have been carried out in the greatest perfection, are those where the
lands are very much subdivided, and are in the hands of small proprietors.
He instances the plain round Valencia, several of the southern departments of
France, particularly those of Vaucluse and Bouches du Rhone, Lombardy,
Tuscany, the districts of Sienna, Lucoa, and Bergamo, Piedmont, many parts
of Germany, &c., in all which parts of Europe the land is very much sub-
divided among small proprietors. In all these parts great and expensive
systems and plans of general irrigation have been carried out, and are now
being supported by the small proprietors themselves ; thus showing how they
are able to accomplish, by means of combination, work requiring the expeu-
diture of great quantities of capital." — Kat/, i. 126.

f Laing, Journal of a Residence in Norwatf, pp. 36, 37.
J Notes of a Traveller, pp. 299 et seqq.

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. ll

Draining, manuring, economical arrangement, cleaning the land,
regular rotations, valuable stock and implements, all belong exclu-
sively to large farms, worked by large capital, and by hired labour.
This reads very well ; but if we raise our eyes from their books to
their fields, and coolly compare what we see in the best districts
farmed in large farms, with what we see in the best districts farmed
in small farms, we see, and there is no blinking the fact, better
crops on the ground in Flanders, East Friesland, Holstein, in
short, on the whole line of the arable land of equal quality of
the Continent, from the Sound to Calais, than we see on the
line of British coast opposite to this line, and in the same
latitudes, from the Frith of Forth all round to Dover. Minute
labour on small portions of arable ground gives evidently, in equal
soils and climate, a superior productiveness, where these small
portions belong in property, as in Flanders, Holland, Friesland, and
Ditmarsch in Holstein, to the farmer. It is not pretended by our
agricultural writers, that our large farmers, even in Berwickshire,
Roxburghshire, or the Lothians, approach to the garden-like culti-
vation, attention to manures, drainage, and clean state of the land,
or in productiveness from a small space of soil not originally rich,
which distinguish the small farmers of Flanders, or their system*
In the best-farmed parish in Scotland or England, more land is
wasted in the corners and borders of the fields of large farms, in the
roads through them, unnecessarily wide because they are bad, and
bad because they are wide, in neglected commons, waste spots, use-
less belts and clumps of sorry trees, and such unproductive areas,
than would maintain the poor of the parish, if they were all laid to-
gether and cultivated. But large capital applied to farming is of
course only applied to the very best of the soils of a country. It
cannot touch the small unproductive spots which require more time
and labour to fertilize them than is consistent with a quick return of
capital. But although hired time and labour cannot be applied
beneficially to such cultivation, the owner's own time and labour may.
He is working for no higher terms at first from his land than a bare
living. But in the course of generations fertility and value are pro-
duced ; a better living, and even very improved processes of bus-

18 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

bandry, are attained. Furrow draining, stall feeding all summer,
liquid manures, are universal in the husbandry of the small farms
of Flanders, Lombardy, Switzerland. Our most improving districts
under large farms are but beginning to adopt them. Dairy husbandry
eifen, and the manufacture of the largest cheeses by the co-operation
of many small farmers,* the mutual assurance of property against
fire and hail-storms, by the co-operation of small farmers— the most
scientific and expensive of all agricultural operations in modern times,
the manufacture of beet-root sugar — the supply of the European
markets with flax and hemp, by the husbandry of small farmers — the
abundance of legumes, fruits, poultry, in the usual diet even of the
lowest classes abroad, and the total want of such variety at the
tables even of our middle classes, and this variety and abundance
essentially connected with the husbandry of small farmers — all these
are features in the occupation of a country by small proprietor-farmers,
which must make the inquirer pause before he admits the dogma of
our land doctors at home, that large farms worked by hired labour
and great capital can alone bring out the greatest productiveness
of the soil, and furnish the greatest supply of the necessaries and
conveniences of life to the inhabitants of a country."

* The manner in which the Swiss peasants combine to carry on cheese-
making by their united capital deserves to be noted. " Each parish in Swit-
zerland hires a man, generally from the district of Gruyere, in the Canton of
Freyburg, to take care of the herd and make the cheese. One cheeseman, one
pressman or assistant, and one cowherd are considp/ed necessary for every
forty cows. The owners of the cows get credit each of them, in a book daily
for the quantity of milk given by each cow. The cheeseman and his assistants
milk the cows, put the milk all together, and make cheese of it, and at the end
of the season each owner receives the weight of cheese proportionable to the
quantity of milk his cows have delivered. By this co-operative plan, instead of
the small-sized unmarketable cheeses only, which each could produce out of
his three or four cows' milk, he has the same weight in large marketable cheese
superior in quality, because made by people who attend to no other business.
The cheeseman and his assistants are paid so much per head of the cows, in
money or in cheese, or sometimes they hire the cows, :"ud pay the owners in
money or cheese." — Notes of a Traveller, p. 351. A similir system exists in
the French Jura. See, for full details, Lavergne, Rural Economy of France,
2nd ed., pp. 139 et seqq. One of the most remarkable points in this interest-
ing case of combination of labour, is the confidence which it supposes, and which
experience must justify, in the integrity of the persons employed.

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 13

§ 4. Among the many flourishing regions of Germany in which
peasant properties prevail, I select the Palatinate, for the advantage
of quoting, from an English source, the results of recent personal
observation of its agriculture and its people. Mr. Howitt, a writer
whose habit it is to see all English objects and English socialities on
their brightest side, and who, in treating of the Rlienish peasantry,
certainly does not underrate the rudeness of their implements, and
the inferiority of their ploughing, nevertheless shows that under the
invigorating influence of the feelings of proprietorship, they make
up for the imperfections of their apparatus by the intensity of their
application. " The peasant harrows and cle*s his land tUl it is in
the nicest order, and it is admirable to see the crops which he
obtains."* " The peasants^ are the great and ever present objects
of country life. They are the great population of the country,
because they themselves are the possessors. This country is, in
fact, for the most part, in the hands of the people. It is parcelled

out among the multitude The peasants are not,

as with us, for the most part, totally cut o£E from property in the
soil they cultivate, totally dependent on the labour afforded by
others — they are themselves the proprietors. It is, perhaps, from
this cause that they are probably the most industrious peasantry in
the world. They labour busily, early and late, because they feel

that they are labouring for themselves The German

peasants work hard, but they have no actual want. Every man
has his house, his orchard, his roadside trees, commonly so heavy
with fruit, that he is obliged to prop and secure them all ways,
or they would be torn to pieces. He has his corn-plot, his plot for
mangel-wurzel, for hemp, and so on. He is his own master ; and
he, and every member of his family, have the strongest motives to
labour. You see the effect of this in that unremitting diUgence
which is beyond that of the whole world besides, and his economy,
which is still greater. The Germans, indeed, are not so active and
lively as the EngUsh. You never see them in a bustle, or as

* Mural and Domestic Life of Oermavy, p. 27.
t Ibid. p. 40.

14 PEASANT PROPKIETORS,

though they meant to knock off a vast deal in a little time.

They are, on the contrary, slow, but for ever doing.

They plod on from day to day, and year to year — the most patient,
untirable, and persevering of animals. The English peasant is so
cut off from the idea of property, that he comes habitually to look
upon it as a thing from which he is warned by the laws of the large
proprietors, and becomes, in consequence, spiritless, purposeless.

The German bauer, on the contrary, looks on the

country as made for him and his fellow-men. He feels himself a
man ; he has a stake in the country, as good as that of the bulk of
his neighbours ; no man can threaten him with ejection, or the work-
house, so long as he is active and economical. He walks, therefore,
with a bold step ; he looks you in the face with the air of a free
man, but of a respectful one."

Of their industry, the same writer thus further speaks : " There
is not an hour of the year in which they do not find imceasing
occupation. In the depth of winter, when the weather permits
them by any means to get out of doors, they are always finding
something to do. They carry out their manure to their lands
while the frost is in them. If there is not frost, they are busy
cleaning ditches and felling old fruit trees, or such as do not bear
well. Such of them as are too poor to lay in a sufficient stock of wood,
find plenty of work in ascending into the mountainous woods, and
bringing thence fuel. It would astonish the English common
people to see the intense labour with which the Germans earn their
firewood. In the depths of frost and snow, go into any of their
hills and woods, and there you find them hacking up stumps, cutting
off branches, and gathering, by all means which the official wood-
police will allow, boughs, stakes, and pieces of wood, which they
convey home with the most incredible toil and patience."* After
a description of their careful and laborious vineyard culture, he
continues,! " In England, with its great quantity of grass lands, and
its large farms, so soon as the grain is in, and the fields are shut up

* Sural and Domestic Life of Oermany, p. 44.
t Ibid. p. 50.

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 15^

for hay grass, the country seems in a comparative state of rest and
quiet. But here they are everywhere, and for ever, hoeing and
mowing, planting and cutting, weeding and gathering. They have
a succession of crops like a market-gardener. They have their
carrots, poppies, hemp, flax, saintfoin, lucerne, rape, colewort,
cabbage, rotabaga, black turnips, Swedish and white turnips,
teazles, Jerusalem artichokes, mangel- w^urzel, parsnips, kidney-beans,
field-beans, and peas, vetches, Indian corn, buckwheat, madder for
the manufacturer, potatoes, their great crop of tobacco, millet — ^all,
or the greater part, under the family management, in their own;
family allotments. They have had these things first to sow, many
of them to transplant, to hoe, to weed, to clear off insects, to top ;
many of them to mow and gather in successive crops. They have
their water-meadows, of which kind almost all their meadows are, to
flood, to mow, and reflood ; watercourses to reopen and to make
anew : their early fruits to gather, to bring to market with their
green crops of vegetables ; their cattle, sheep, calves, foals, most of
them prisoners, and poultry to look after ; their vines, as they
shoot rampantly in the summer heat, to prune, and thin out the
leaves when they are too thick : and any one may imagine what a
scene of incessant labour it is."

This interesting sketch, to the general truth of which any obser-
vant traveller in that highly cultivated and populous region can bear
■witness, accords with the more elaborate delineation by a distin-
guished inhabitant. Professor Eau, in his little treatise " On the
Agricailture of the Palatinate."* Dr. Rau bears testimony not only
to the industry but to the skill and intelligence of the peasantry ;
their judicious employment of manures, and excellent rotation of
crops ; the progressive improvement of their agriculture for genera-
tions past, and the spirit of further improvement which is still active.
'* The indefatigableness of the country people, who may be seen in
activity all the day and all the year, and are never idle, because
they make a good distribution of their labours, and find for every

* On the Agriculture of the Palatinate, and particidarly in the territory of
Meidelberg. By Dr. Karl Heinrich Kau. Heidelberg, 1830.

16 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

interval of time a suitable occupation, is as well known as their zeal
is praiseworthy in turning to use every circumstance which presents
itself, in seizing upon every useful novelty which offers, and even
in searching out new and advantageous methods. One easily per-
ceives that the peasant of this district has reflected much on his
occupation : he can give reasons for his modes of proceeding, even
if those reasons are not always tenable ; he is as exact an observer
of proportions as it is possible to be from memory, without the aid
of figures : he attends to such general signs of the times as appear
to augur him either benefit or harm."*

The experience of all other parts of Germany is similar. " In
Saxony," says Mr. Kay, " it is a notorious fact, that during the last
thirty years, and since the peasants became the proprietors of the
land, there has been a rapid and continual improvement in the
condition of the houses, in the manner of living, in the dress of the
peasants, and particularly in the culture of the land. I have twice
walked through that part of Saxony called Saxon Switzerland, in
company with a German guide, and on purpose to see the state of
the villages and of the farming, and I can safely challenge contra-
diction when I aflSrm that there is no farming in all Europe superior
to the laboriously careful cultivation of the valleys of that part of
Saxony. There, as in the cantons of Berne, Vaud, and Zurich, and
in the Rhine provinces, the farms are singularly flourishing. They
are kept in beautiful condition, and are always neat and well
managed. The ground is cleared as if it were a garden. No hedges
or brushwood encumber it. ' Scarcely a rush or thistle or a bit of
rank grass is to be seen. The meadows are well watered every
spring with liqvdd manure, saved from the drainings of the farm
yards. The grass is so free from weeds that the Saxon meadows
reminded me more of English lawns than of anything else I had
seen. The peasants endeavour to outstrip one another in the
quantity and quality of the produce, in the preparation of the
ground, and in the general cultivation of their respective portions.
All the little proprietors are eager to find out how to farm so as to

• Ran, pp. 15, 16.

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 17

produce the greatest results; they diligently seek after improve-
ments ; they send their children to the agricultural schools in order
to fit them to assist their fathers ; and each proprietor soon adopts
a new improvement introduced by any of his neighbours."* If this
be not overstated, it denotes a state of intelligence very difEerent
not only from that of English labourers but of English farmers.

Mr. Kay's book, published in 1850, contains a mass of evidence
gathered from observation and inquiries in many different parts of
Europe, together with attestations from many distinguished writers,
to the beneficial effects of peasant properties. Among the testi-
monies which he cites respecting their effect on agriculture, I select
the following.

" Eeichensperger, himself an inhabitant of that part of Prussia
where the land is the most subdi voided, has published a long and
very elaborate work to show the admirable consequences of a system
of freeholds in land. He expresses a very decided opinion that not
only are the gross products of any given number of acres held and
cultivated by small or peasant proprietors, greater than the gross
products of an equal number of acres held by a few great proprie-
tors, and cultivated by tenant farmers, but that the net products of
the former, after deducting all the expenses of cultivation, are also
greater than the net products of the latter. . . . He mentions one
fact which seems to prove that the fertility of the land in countries
where the properties are small, must be rapidly increasing. He
says that the price of the land which is divided into small proper-
ties in the Prussian Rhine provinces, is much higher, and has been
rising much more rapidly, than the price of land on the great estates.
He and Professor Rau both say that this rise in the price of the
small estates would have ruined the more recent purchasers, unless
the productiveness of the small estates had increased in at least an
equal proportion ; and as the small proprietors have been gradually

* The Social Condition and Education of the People in England and
Europe ; showing the results of the Primary Schools, and of the division of
Landed Property in Foreign Countries. By Joseph Kay, Esq., M.A., Barrister-
at-Law, and late Travelling Bachelor of the University of Cambridge. Vol. i.
pp. 138-40.

C

18 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

hecoming more and more prosperous notwithstanding the increasing'
prices they have paid for their land, he argues, with apparent just-
ness, that this would seem to show that not only the gross profits of
the small estates, but the net profits also have been gradually increas-
ing, and that the net profits per acre, of land, when farmed by small
proprietors, are greater than the net profits per acre of land farmed
by a great proprietor. He says, with seeming truth, that the in-
creasing price of land in the small estates cannot be the mere effect
of competition, or it would have diminished the profits and the
prosperity of the small proprietors, and that this result has not
followed the rise.

" Albrecht Thaer, another celebrated German writer on the
different systems of agriculture, in one of his later works (' Prin-
ciples of Rational Agriculture ') expresses his decided conviction,
that the net produce of land is greater when farmed by small pro-
prietors than when farmed by great proprietors or their tenants. , . .
This opinion of Thaer is all the more remarkable, as, during the
early part of his life, he was very strongly in favour of the English
system of great estates and great farms."

Mr. Kay adds from his own observation, " The peasant farming
df Prussia, Saxony, Holland, and Switzerland is the most perfect
and economical farming I have ever witnessed in any country."*

§ 5. But the most decisive example in opposition to the English
prejudice against cultivation by peasant proprietors, is the case of
Belgium. The soil is originally one of the worst in Europe. " The
provinces," says Mr. M'CuUoch,-]- " of West and East Flanders, and
Hainault, form a far stretching plain, of which the luxuriant vege-
tation indicates the indefatigable care and labour bestowed upon its
cultivation ; for the natural soil consists almost wholly of barren
sand, and its great fertility is entirely the result of very skilful
management and judicious application of various manures." There
exists a carefully prepared and comprehensive treatise on Flemish
Husbandry, in the Farmer's Series of the Society for the Diffusion

* Kay, i. 116-8.
f Chographical Dictionary, art. " Belgium."

PEASANT PEOPRIETOES. 19

of Useful Knowledge. The writer observes,* that the Flemish
agriculturists " seem to want nothing but a space to work upon :
whatever be the quaKty or texture of the soil, in time they wiU
make it produce something. The sand in the Campine can be com-
pared to nothing but the sands on the sea-shore, which they pro-
bably were originally. It is highly interesting to follow step by
step the progress of improvement. Here you see a cottage and
rude cow-shed erected on a spot of the most unpromising aspect.
The loose white sand blown into irregular mounds is only kept
together by the roots of the heath : a small spot only is levelled
aftid surrounded by a ditch : part of this is covered with young
broom, part is planted with potatoes, and perhaps a small patch of
diminutive clover may show itself :" but manures, both solid and
liquid, are collecting, " and this is the nucleus from which, in a few
years, a little farm will spread around. ... If there is no manure
at hand, the only thing that can be sown, on pure sand, at first, is
broom : this grows in the most barren soils ; in three years it is fit to
cut, and produces some return in fagots for the bakers and brickmakers.
The leaves which have fallen have somewhat enriched the soil, and
the fibres of the roots have given a certain degree of compactness.
It may now be ploughed and sown with buckwheat, or even with
rye without manure. By the time this is reaped, some manure may
have been collected, and a regular course of cropping may begin.
As soon as clover and potatoes enable the farmer to keep cows and
make manure, the improvement goes on rapidly ; in a few years the
soil undergoes a complete change : it becomes mellow and retentive
of moisture, and enriched by the vegetable matter afforded by the
decomposition of the roots of clover and other plants. . . . After
the land has been gradually brought into a good state, and is culti-
vated in a regular manner, there appears much less difference
between the soils which have been originally good, and those which
have been made so by labour and industry. At least the crops in
both appear more nearly alike at harvest, than is the case in soils
of different qualities in other countries. This is a great proof of the

* Pp. 11-14.
c2

20 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

excellency of the Flemish system ; for it shows that the land is in
a constant state of improvement, and that the deficiency of the soil
is compensated by greater attention to tillage and manuring, espe-
cially the latter."

The people who labour thus intensely, because labouring for
themselves, have practised for centuries those principles of rotation
of crops and economy of manures, which in England are counted
among modern discoveries : and even now the superiority of their
agriculture, as a whole, to that of England, is admitted by compe-
tent judges. " The cultivation of a poor light soil, or a moderate
soil," says the writer last quoted,* " is generally superior in Flanders
to that of the most improved farms of the same kind in Britain.
We surpass the Flemish farmer greatly in capital, in varied imple-
ments of tillage, in the choice and breeding of cattle and sheep,"
(though, according to the same authority, f they are much " before
us in the feeding of their cows,") " and the British farmer is in
general a man of superior education to the Flemish peasant. But
in the minute attention to the qualities of the soil, in the manage-
ment and application of manures of different kinds, in the judicious
succession of crops, and especially in the economy of land, so
that every part of it shall be in a constant state of production, we
have still something to learn from the Flemings," and not from an
instructed and enterprising Fleming here and there, but from the
general practice.

Much of the most highly cultivated part of the country consists
of peasant properties, managed by the proprietors, always either
wholly or partly by spade industry. J " When the land is culti-
vated entirely by the spade, and no horses are kept, a cow is kept
for every three acres of land, and entirely fed on artificial grasses
and roots. This mode of cultivation is principally adopted in the
Waes district, where properties are very small. All the labour is
done by the different members of the family ;" children soon be-
ginning " to assist in various minute operations, according to their

* Flemish Jlushandry. p. 3.
f b d. p. 13. j Ibid. pp. 73 et seq.

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 21

age and strength, such as weeding, hoeing, feeding the cows. If
they can raise rye and wheat enough to make their bread, and
potatoes, turnips, carrots and clover, for the cows, they do well;
and the produce of the sale of their rape-seed, their flax, their
hemp, and their butter, after deducting the expense of manure
purchased, which is always considerable, gives them a very good
profit. Suppose the whole extent of the land to be six acres,
which is not an uncommon occupation, and which one man can
manage;" then (after describing the cultivation), "if a man with
his wife and three young children are considered as equal to three
and a half grown up men, the family will require thirty-nine
bushels of grain, forty-nine bushels of potatoes, a fat hog, and the
butter and mUk of one cow : an acre and a half of land will produce
the grain and potatoes, and allow some corn to finish the fattening
of the hog, which has the extra buttermilk : another acte in clover,
carrots, and potatoes, together with the stubble turnips, wiU more
than feed the cow ; consequently two and a half acres of land is
suflScient to feed this family, and the produce of the other three
and a half may be sold to pay the rent or the interest of purchase-
money, wear and tear of implements, extra manure, and clothes for
the family. But these acres are the most profitable on the farm,
for the hemp, flax, and colza are included ; and by having another
acre in clover and roots, a second cow can be kept, and its produce
sold. We have, therefore, a solution of the problem, how a family
can live and thrive on six acres of moderate land." After showing
by calculation that this extent of land can be cultivated in the most
perfect manner by the family without any aid from hired labour,
the writer continues, " In a farm of ten acres entirely cultivated by
the spade, the addition of a man and a woman to the members of
the family will render all the operations more easy ; and with a
horse and cart to carry out the manu_re, and bring home the
produce, and occasionally draw the laaxvows, fifteen acres may be
very well cultivated. . . . Thus it wiU be seen," (this is the
result of some pages of details and calculations,*) " that by spade

* Flemish Husbandrtf, p. 81.

22 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

husbandry, an industrious man with a small capital, occupying only
fifteen acres of good light land, may not only live and bring up a
family, paying a good rent, but may accumulate a considerable sum
in the course of his life." But the indefatigable industry by which
he accomplishes this, and of which so large a portion is expended
not in the mere cultivation, but in the improvement, for a distant
return, of the soil itself — has that industry no connexion with not
paying rent ? Could it exist, without presupposing, at least, a
virtually permanent tenure ?

As to their mode of living, " the Flemish farmers and labourers
live much more economically than the same class in England : they
seldom eat meat, except on Sundays and in harvest : buttermilk
and potatoes with brown bread is their daily food," It is on this
kind of evidence that English travellers, as they hurry through
Europe, pronounce the peasantry of every Continental country poor
and miserable, its agricultural and social system a failure, and the
English the only regime under which labourers are well off. It is,
truly enough, the only regime under which labourers, whether well
off or not, never attempt to be better. So little are English
labourers accustomed to consider it possible that a labourer should
not spend all he earns, that they habitually mistake the signs of
economy for those of poverty. Observe the true interpretation of
the phenomena.

" Accordingly they are gradually acquiring capital, and their great
ambition is to have land of their own. They eagerly seize every
opportunity of purchasing a small farm, and the price is so raised
by competition, that land pays little more than two per cent, interest
for the purchase money. Large properties gradually disappear, and
are divided into small portions, which sell at a high rate. But the
wealth and industry of the population is continually increasing,
being rather diffused through the masses than accumulated in
individuals."

With facts like these, known and accessible, it is not a little
surprising to find the case of Flanders referred to not in recom-
mendation of peasant properties, but as a warning against them ;
on no better ground than a presumptive excess of population, in-

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 23

ferred from the distress whicli existed among the peasantry of
Brabant and East Flanders in the disastrous year 1846-47. The
evidence which I have cited from a writer conversant with the
subject, and having no economical theory to support, shows that the
distress, whatever may have been its severity, arose from no insuffi-
ciency in these little properties to supply abundantly, in any ordi-
nary circumstances, the wants of all Avhom they have to maintain.
It arose from the essential condition to which those are subject who
employ land of their own in growing their own food, namely, that
the vicissitudes of the seasons must be borne by themselves, and
cannot, as in the case of large farmers, be shifted from them to the
consumer. When we remember the season of 1846, a partial
failure of all kinds of grain, and an almost total one of the potato,
it is no wonder that in so unusual a calamity the produce of six
acres, half of them sown with flax, hemp, or oil seeds, should fall
short of a year's provision for a family. But we are not to contrast
the distressed Flemish peasant with an English capitalist who farms
several hundred acres of land. If the peasant were an Englishman,
he would not be that capitalist, but a day labourer under a capitalist.
And is there no distress, in times of dearth, among day labourers ?
Was there none, that year, in countries where small proprietors and
small farmers are unknown ? I am aware of no reason for believing
that the distress was greater in Belgium, than corresponds to the
proportional extent of the failure of crops compared with other
countries.*

§ 6. The evidence of the beneficial operation of peasant pro-

* As much of the distress lately complained of in Belgium, as partakes in
any degree of a permanent character, appears to be almost confined to the
portion of the population who carry on manufacturing labour, either by itself
or in conjunction with agricultural; and to be occasioned by a diminished
demand for Belgic manufactures.

To the preceding testimonies respecting Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium,
may be added the following from Niebuhr, respecting the Roman Campagna. In
a letter from Tivoli, he says, " Wherever you find hereditary farmers, or small
proprietors, there you also find industry and honesty. I believe that a man who
would employ a large fortune in establishing small freeholds might put an end
to robbery in the mountain districts." — lAfe and Letters of Niehuhr, vol. ii.
p. 149.

24 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

perties in the Channel Islands is of so decisive a character, that I
cannot help adding to the numerous citations already made, part of
a description of the economical condition of those islands, by a
writer who combines personal observation with an attentive study
of the information afforded by others. Mr. William Thornton, in
his "Plea for Peasant Proprietors," a book which by the excellence
both of its materials and of its execution, deserves to be regarded
as the standard work on that side of the question, speaks of the
island of Guernsey in the following terms : " Not even in England
is nearly so large a quantity of produce sent to market from a
tract of such limited extent. This of itself might prove that the
cultivators must be far removed above poverty, for being absolute
owners of all the produce raised by them, they of course sell only
what they do not themselves require. But the satisfactoriness of
their condition is apparent to every observer. ' The happiest com-
munity,' says Mr. Hill, ' which it has ever been my lot to fall in
with, is to be found in this little island of Guernsey.' ' No matter,'
says Sir George Head, * to what point the traveller may choose to
bend his way, comfort everywhere prevails.' What most surprises
the English visitor in his first walk or drive beyond the bounds of
St. Peter's Port is the appearance of the habitations with which the
landscape is thickly studded. Many of them are such as in his own
coimtry would belong to persons of middle rank ; but he is puzzled
to guess what sort of people live in the others, which, though in
general not large enough for farmers, are almost invariably much
too good in every respect for day labourers. . . . Literally, in the
whole island, with the exception of a few fishermen's huts, there is
not one so mean as to be likened to the ordinary habitation of an
English farm labourer. . . . ' Look,' says a late Bailiff of Guernsey,
Mr. De L'Isle Brock, * at the hovels of the English, and compare
them with the cottages of our peasantry.' . . . Beggars are utterly
unknown. . . . Pauperism, able-bodied pauperism at least, is nearly
as rare as mendicancy. The Savings Banks accounts also bear
witness to the general abundance enjoyed by the labouring classes
of Guernsey. In the year 1841, there were in England, out of a
population of nearly fifteen millions, less than 700,000 depositors,

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 25

or one in every twenty persons, and the average amount of the
deposits was 30/. In Guernsey, in the same year, out of a popula-
tion of 26,000, the number of depositors was 1920, and the average
amount of the deposits 40/."* The evidence as to Jersey and
Alderney is of a similar character.

Of the efficiency and productiveness of agriculture on the small
properties of the Channel Islands, Mr. Thornton produces ample
evidence, the result X)f which he sums up as follows : " Thus it
appears that in the two principal Channel Islands, the agricultural
population is, in the one twice, and in the other, three times, as
dense as in Britain, there being in the latter country, only one
cultivator to twenty-two acres of cultivated land, while in Jersey
there is one to eleven, and in Guernsey one to seven acres. Yet
the agriculture of these islands maintains, besides cultivators, non-
agricultural populations, respectively four and five times as dense
as that of Britain. This difference does not arise from any supe-
riority of soil or climate possessed by the Channel Islands, for the
former is naturally rather poor, and the latter is not better than in
the southern counties of England. It is owing entirely to the assi-
duous care of the farmers, and to the abundant use of manure. "|
" In the year 1837," he says in another place,J "the average yield
of wheat in the large farms of England was only twenty-one
bushels, and the highest average for any one county was no more
than twenty-six bushels. The highest average since claimed for
the whole of England is thirty bushels. In Jersey, where the
average size of farms is only sixteen acres, the average produce of
wheat per acre was stated by Inglis in 1834 to be thirty-six bushels;
but it is proved by official tables to have been forty bushels in the
five years ending with 1833. In Guernsey, where farms are still
smaller, four quarters per acre, according to Inglis, is considered a
good, but still a very common crop." " Thirty shillings§ an acre
would be thought in England a very fair rent for middling land ;

. * A Plea for Peasant Proprietors. By William Thomas Thornton,
pp. 99-104.

t Ibid. p. 38. X I'^i^- P- 9- § ^^i^- P- ^2.

26 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

but in the Channel Islands, it is only very inferior land that would
not let for at least 4Z."

§ 7. It is from France, that impressions unfavourable to peasant
properties are generally drawn : it is in France that the system is
so often asserted to have brought forth its fruit in the most
wretched possible agriculture, and to be rapidly reducing, if not to
have already reduced the peasantry, by subdivision of land, to the
verge of starvation. It is difficult to account for the general pre-
valence of impressions so much the reverse of truth. The agri-
culture of France was wretched and the peasantry in great indigence
before the Revolution. At that time they were not, so imiversally
as at present, landed proprietors. There were, however, consider-
able districts of France where the land, even the a, was to a great
extent the property of the peasantry, and among these were many
of the most conspicuous exceptions to the general bad agriculture
and to the general poverty. An authority, on this point, not to be
disputed, is Arthur Young, the inveterate enemy of small farms,
the coryphaeus of the modern English school of agriculturists ; who
yet, travelling over nearly the whole of France in 1787, 1788, and
1789, when he finds remarkable excellence of cultivation, never
hesitates to ascribe it to peasant property. "Leaving Sauve," says
he,* " I was much struck with a -large tract of land, seemingly
nothing but huge rocks ; yet most of it enclosed and planted with
the most industrious attention. Every man has an olive, a mulberry,
an almond, or a peach tree, and vines scattered among them ; so
that the whole ground is covered with the oddest mixture of these
plants and bulging rocks, that can be conceived. The inhabitants
of this village deserve encouragement for their industry ; and if I
were a French minister they should have it. They would soon
turn all the deserts aroimd them into gardens. Such a knot of
active husbandmen, who turn their rocks into scenes of fertility
because I suppose their own, would do the same by the wastes, if
animated by the same omnipotent principle." Again :f " Walk to

* Arthur Young's Travels in France, vol. i. p. 50. f Ibid. vol. i. p. 88.

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 27

llossendal," (near Dunkirk,) " where M. le Brun has an improve-
ment on the Dunes, which he very obligingly showed me. Between
the town and that place is a great number of neat little houses,
Iwiilt each with its garden, and one or two fields enclosed, of most
wretched blowing dune sand, naturally as white as snow, but im-
proved by industry. The magic of property turns sand to gold."
And again :* " Going out of Gauge, I was surprised to find by far
the greatest exertion in irrigation which I had yet seen in France ;
and then passed by some steep mountains, highly cultivated in.
terraces. Much watering at St. Lawrence. The scenery very in-
teresting to a farmer. From Gauge, to the mountain of rough
ground which I crossed, the ride has been the most interesting
which I have taken in France ; the efforts of industry the most-
vigorous; the animation the most lively. An activity has been
here, that has swept away all difficulties before it, and has clothed
the very rocks with verdure. ' It would be a disgrace to common
sense to ask the cause ; the enjoyment of property must have done
it. Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will
turn it into a garden ; give him a nine years' lease of a garden, and
he will convert it into a desert."

In his description of the country at the foot of the Western
Pyrenees, he speaks no longer from surmise, but firom knowledge.
*' Takef the road to Moneng, and come presently to a scene which
was so new to me in France, that I could hardly believe my own
eyes. A succession of many well-built, tight, and comfortable
farming cottages built of stone and covered with tiles ; each having
its little garden, enclosed by clipt thorn-hedges, with plenty of
peach and other fruit-trees, some fine oaks scattered in the hedges,
and young trees niirsed up with so inuch care, that nothing but the
fostering attention of the owner could effect anything like it. To
every house belongs a farm, perfectly well enclosed, with grass
borders mown and neatly kept around the corn-fields, with gates to
pass from one enclosure to another. There are some parts of
England (where small yeomen still remain) that resemble this

* Arthur Young's Travels in France, p. 51. t ^'oung, p. 56.

88 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

country of Beam ; but we have very little that is equal to what I
have seen in this ride of twelve miles from Pau to Moneng. It is
all in the hands of little proprietors, without the farms being so
small as to occasion a vicious and miserable population. An air of
neatness, warmth, and comfort breathes over the whole. It is
visible in their new built houses and stables ; in their little gardens;
in their hedges ; in the courts before their doors ; even in the coops
for their poultry, and the sties for their hogs. A peasant does not
think of rendering his pig comfortable, if his own happiness hang
by the thread of a nine years' lease. We are now in B^am, within
a few miles of the cradle of Henry IV. Do they inherit these
blessings from that good prince ? The benignant genius of that
good monarch seems to reign still over the covintry ; each peasant
has the fowl in the pot^ He frequently notices the excellence of
the agriculture of French Flanders, where the farms " are all small,
and much in the hands of little ^oprietors."* In the Pays de
Caux, also a country of small properties, the agriculture was
miserable; of which his explanation was that it "is a manufacturing
country, and farming is but a secondary pursuit to the cotton fabric,
which spreads over the whole of it,"! The same district is still a
seat of manufactures, and a country of small proprietors, and is now,
whether we judge from the appearance of the crops or from the
official returns, one of the best cultivated in France. In " Flanders,
Alsace, and part of Artois, as well as on the banks of the Garonne,
France possesses a husbandry equal to our own. "J Those countries,
and a considerable part of Quercy, " are cultivated more like
gardens than farms. Perhaps they are too much like gardens,
from the smallness of properties."§ In those districts the admirable
rotation of crops, so long practised in Italy, but at that time gene-
rally neglected in France, was already universal. "The rapid
succession of crops, the harvest of one being but the signal of
sowing immediately for a second," (the same fact which strikes all
observers in the valley of the Rhine,) " can scarcely be carried to

* Young, pp. 322-4. t Ibid. p. 325. % Ibid. vol. i. p. 357.

§ Ibid. p. 364.

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 29

greater perfection : and this is a point, perhaps, of all others the
most essential to good husbandry, when such crops are so justly
distributed as we generally find them in these provinces ; cleaning
and ameliorating ones being made the preparation for such as foul
and exhaust."

It must not, however, be supposed, that Arthur Young's testimony
on the subject of peasant properties is uniformly favourable. In
Lorraine, Champagne, and elsewhere, he finds the agriculture bad,
and the small proprietors very miserable, in consequence, as he says,
of the extreme subdivision of the land. His opinion is thus
summed up :* — " Before I travelled, I conceived that small farms,
in property, were very susceptible of good cultivation ; and that
the occupier of such, having no rent to pay, might be sufficiently at
his ease to work improvements, and carry on a vigorous husbandry ;
but what I have seen in France, has greatly lessened my good
opinion of them. In Flanders, I saw excellent husbandry on pro-
perties of 30 to 100 acres ; but we seldom find here such small
patches of property as are common in other provinces. In Alsace,
and on the Garonne, that is, on soils of such exuberant fertility as
to demand no exertions, some small properties also are well cultivated.
In Beam, I passed through a region of little farmers, whose
appearance, neatness, ease, and happiness charmed me ; it was what
property alone could, on a small scale, effect ; but these were by no
means contemptibly small ; they are, as I judged by the distance
from house to house, from 40 to 80 acres. Except these, and a
very few other instances, I saw nothing respectable on small pro-
perties, except a most unremitting industry. Indeed, it is necessary
to impress on the reader's mind, that though the husbandry I met
with, in a great variety of instances on little properties, was as bad
as can be well conceived, yet the industry of the possessors was so
conspicuous, and so meritorious, that no commendations would be
too great for it. It was sufficient to prove that property in land is,
of all others, the most active instigator to severe and incessant
labour. And this truth is of such force and extent, that I know no

* Young, p. 412.

30 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

way so sure of carrying tillage to a mountain top, as by permitting
the adjoining villagers to acquire it in property ; in fact, we see
that in the mountains of Languedoc, &c., they have conveyed earth
in baskets, on their backs, to form a soil where nature had denied
it."

The experience, therefore, of this celebrated agricultiu^st, and
apostle of the grande culture, may be said to be, that the effect of
small properties, cultivated by peasant proprietors, is admirable
when they are not too small : so small, namely, as not fully to
occupy the time and attention of the family ; for he often complains,
with great apparent reason, of the quantity of idle time which the
peasantry had on their hands when the land was in very small
portions, notwithstanding the ardour with which they toiled to im-
prove their little patrimony, in every way which their knowledge
or ingenuity could suggest. He recommends, accordingly, that a
limit of subdivision should be fixed by law ; and this is by no
means an indefensible proposition in countries, if such there are,
where division, having already gone farther than the state of
capital and the nature of the staple articles of cultivation render
advisable, stiU continues progressive. That each peasant should
have a patch of land, even in full property, if it is not sufficient to
support him in comfort, is a system with all the disadvantages, and
scarcely any of the benefits, of small properties; since he must
either live in indigence on the produce of his land, or depend as
habitually as if he had no landed possessions, on the wages of hired
labour : which, besides, if aU the holdings sturounding him are of
similar dimensions, he has little prospect of finding. The benefits
of peasant properties are conditional on their not being too much
subdivided ; that is, on their not being required to maintain too
many persons, in proportion to the produce that can be raised from
them by those persons. The question resolves itself, like most
questions respecting the condition of the labouring classes, into one
of population. Are small properties a stimulus to undue mxiltipli-
cation, or a check to it 1

31

PART n.

§ 1. Befoee examining the influence of peasant pi-operties oa
the ultimate economical interests of the labouring class, as de-
termined by the increase of population, let us note the points
respecting the moral and social influence of that territorial arrange-
ment, which may be looked upon as established, either by the
reason of the case, or by the facts and authorities cited in the
preceding chapter.

The reader new to the subject must have been struck with the
powerful impression made upon all the witnesses to whom I have
referred, by what a Swiss statistical writer calls the " almost super-
human industry" of peasant proprietors.* On this point at least, au-
thorities are unanimous. Those who have seen only one country of
peasant properties, always think the inhabitants of that country the
most industrious in the world. There is as little doubt among ob-
servers, with what feature in the condition of the peasantry this pre-
eminent industry is connected. It is " the magic of property" which,
in the words of Arthur Young, "turns sand into gold." The idea of
property does not, however, necessarily imply that there should be
no rent, any more than that there should be no taxes. It merely
implies that the rent shotild be a fixed charge, not liable to be
raised against the possessor by his own improvements, or by the will
of a landlord. A tenant at a quit-rent is, to all intents and purposes,
a proprietor ; a copyholder is not less so than a freeholder. What is
wanted is permanent possession on fixed terms. " Give a man the
secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden ;

* The Canton Schaffhausen (before quoted), p. 53.

32 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

give him a nine years' lease of a garden, and he will convert it into
a desert."

The details which have been cited, and those, still more minute,
to be found in the same authorities, concerning the habitually
elaborate system of cultivation, and the thousand devices of the
peasant proprietor for making every superfluous hour and odd
moment instrumental to some increase in the futiire produce and
value of the land, will explain what has been said elsewhere*
respecting the far larger gross produce which, with anything like
parity of agricultural knowledge, is obtained, from the same qua-
lity of soil, on small farms, at least when they are the property
of the cultivator. The treatise on " Flemish Husbandry " is espe-
cially instructive respecting the means by which untiring industry
does more than outweigh inferiority of resources, imperfection of
implements, and ignorance of scientific theories. The peasant cul-
tivation of Flanders and Italy is affirmed to produce heavier crops,
in equal circumstances of soil, than the best cvdtivated districts
of Scotland and England. It produces them, no doubt, with an
amount of labour which, if paid for by an employer, would make
the cost to him more than equivalent to the benefit ; but to the
peasant it is not cost, it is the devotion of time which he can spare,
to a favo\u"ite pursiiit, if we should not rather say a ruling pas-
sion.f

We have seen, too, that it is not solely by superior exertion that

* Principles of Political Economy, Book i. ch. ii. § 4.

t Read the graphic description by the historian Michelet, of the feelings of
a peasant proprietor towards his land.

" If we would know the inmost thought, the passion, of the French peasant,
it is very easy. Let us walk out on Sunday into the country and follow him.
Behold him yonder, walking in front of us. It is two o'clock ; his wife is at
vespers j he has on his Sunday clothes ; I perceive that he is going to visit his
mistress.

" What mistress ? His land.

" I do not say he goes straight to it. No, he is free to-day, and may either
go or not. Does he not go every day in the week ? Accordingly, he turns
aside, he goes another way, he has business elsewhere. And yet — he goes.

" It is true, he was passing close by ; it was an opportunity. He looks, but
apparently he will not go in ; what for ? And yet — he enters.

" At least it is probable that he will not work ; he is in his Sunday dress : he

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 33

the Flemish cultivators succeed in obtaining these brilliant results.
The same motive which gives such intensity to their industry,
placed them earlier in possession of an amount of agricultural
knowledge, not attained until much later in countries where agri-
culture was carried on solely by hired labour. An equally high
testimony is borne by M. de Lavergne* to the agricultural skill of
the small proprietors in those parts of France to which the petite
culture is really suitable. " In the rich plains of Flanders, on the
banks of the Rhine, the Garonne, the Charente, the Rhone, all the
practices which fertilize the land and increase the productiveness of
labour are known to the very smallest cultivators, and practised by
them, however considerable may be the advances which they require.
In their hands, abundant manures, collected at great cost, repair
and incessantly increase the fertility of the soil, in spite of the
activity of cultivation. The races of cattle are superior, the crops
magnificent. Tobacco, flax, colza, madder, beetroot, in some places ;
in others, the vine, the olive, the plum, the mulberry, only yield
their abundant treasures to a population of industrious labourers.
Is it not also to the petite culture that we are indebted for most of
the garden produce obtained by dint of great outlay in the
neighbourhood of Paris ?"

§ 2. Another aspect of peasant properties, in which it is essential
that they should be considered, is that of an instrument of popular
education. Books and schooling are absolutely necessary to educa-
tion; but not all-sufficient. The mental faculties will be most
developed where they are most exercised ; and what gives more
•

has a clean shirt and blouse. Still, there is no harm in plucking up this weed
and throwing out that stone. There is a stump, too, which is in the way j but
he has not his tools with him, he will do it to-morrow.

" Then he folds his arms and gazes, serious and careful. He gives a long, a
very long look, and seems lost in thought. At last, if he thinks himself ob-
served, if he sees a passer-by, he moves slowly away. Thirty paces off he stops,
turns round, and casts on his land a last look, sombre and profound, but to those
who can see it, the look is full of passion, of heart, of devotion." — The People,
by J. Michelet, Part i. ch. 1.

* Essay on the Rural Economy of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 3rd ed.
p. 177.

34 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

exercise to them than the having a multitude of interests, none of
which can be neglected, and which can be provided for only by
varied efforts of will and intelligence ? Some of the disparagers of
small properties lay great stress on the cares and anxieties which
beset the peasant proprietor of the Rhineland or Flanders. It is
precisely those cares and anxieties which tend to make him a
superior being to an English day-labourer. It is, to be sure,
rather abusing the privileges of fair argument to represent the con-
dition of a day-labourer as not aa anxious one. I can conceive
no circumstances in which he is free from anxiety, where there is a
possibility of being out of employment ; unless he has access to a
profuse dispensation of parish pay, and no shame or reluctance in
'demanding it. The day-labourer has, in the existing state of
society and population, many of the anxieties which have not an
invigorating effect on the mind, and none of those which have.
The position of the peasant proprietor of Flanders is the reverse.
From the anxiety which chills and paralyses — the uncertainty of
having food to eat — few persons are more exempt : it requires as
rare a concurrence of circumstances as the potato failure combined
with an universal bad harvest, to bring him within reach of that
danger. His anxieties are the ordinary vicissitudes of more and
less ; his cares are that he takes his fair share of the business of
life ; that he is a free human being, and not perpetually a child,
which seems to be the approved condition of the labouring classes
according to the prevailing philanthropy. He is no longer a being
of a different order from the middle classes ; he has pursuits and
objects like those which occupy them, and give to their intellects
the greatest part of sTich cultivation as they receive. If there is a
first principle in intellectual education, it is this — that the discipline
which does good to the mind is that in which the mind is active,
not that in which it is passive. The secret for developing the
faculties is to give them much to do, and much inducement to do
it. This detracts nothing from the importance, and even necessity,
of other kinds of mental cultivation. The possession of property
will not prevent the peasant from being coarse, selfish, and narrow-
minded. These things depend on other influences, and other kinds

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 35

of instruction. But this great stimulus to one kind of mental
activity, in no way impedes any other means of intellectual develop-
ment. On the contrary, by cultivating the habit of turning to
practical use every fragment of knowledge acquired, it helps to
render that schooling and reading fruitful, which without some
such auxiliary influence are in too many cases like seed thrown on
a rock.

§ 3. It is not on the intelligence alone, that the situation of a
peasant proprietor exercises an improving influence. It is no less
propitious to the moral virtues of prudence, temperance, and self-
control. Day-labourers, where the labouring class mainly consists
of them, are usually improvident : they spend carelessly to the ftiU
extent of their means, and let the future shift for itself. This is
so notorious, that many persons strongly interested in the welfare
of the labouring classes, hold it as a fixed opinion that an increase
of wages would do them little good, unless accompanied by at least
a corresponding improvement in their tastes and habits. The
tendency of peasant proprietors, and of those who hope to become
proprietors, is to the contrary extreme ; to take even too much
thought for the morrow. They are oftener accused of penurious-
ness than of prodigality. They deny themselves reasonable in-
dulgences, and live wretchedly in order to economise. In
Switzerland almost everybody saves, who has any means of saving ;
the case of the Flemish farmers has been already noticed : among
the French, though a pleasure-loving and reputed to be a self-in-
dulgent people, the spirit of thrift is diffused through the rural
population in a manner most gratifying as a whole, and which in
individual instances errs rather on the side of excess than defect.
Among those who, from the hovels in which they live, and the
herbs and roots which constitute their diet, are mistaken by
travellers for proofs and specimens of general indigence, there are
numbers who have hoards in leathern bags, consisting of sums in
five-franc pieces, which they keep by them perhaps for a whole
generation, unless brought out to be expended in their most
cherished gratification — the purchase of land. If there is a moral

d2

36 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

inconvenience attached to a state of society in which the peasantry-
have land, it is the danger of their being too careful of their pecu-
niary concerns; of its making them crafty, and "calculating" in
the objectionable sense. The French peasant is no simple country-
man, no downright " peasant of the Danube ;"* both in fact and in
fiction he is now " the crafty peasant." That is the stage which he
has reached in the progressive development which the constitution
of things has imposed on human intelligence and human emancipa-
tion. But some excess in this direction is a small and a passing
evil compared with recklessness and improvidence in the labouring
classes, and a cheap price to pay for the inestimable worth of the
virtue of self-dependence, as the general characteristic of a
people : a virtue which is one of the first conditions of excellence
in a human character — the stock on which if the other virtues are
not grafted, they have seldom any firm root ; a quality indispen-
sable in the case of a labouring class, even to any tolerable degree
of physical comfort ; and by which the peasantry of France, and of
most European countries of peasant proprietors, are distinguished
beyond any other labouring population.

§ 4. Is it likely that a state of economical relations so conducive
to frugality and prudence in every other respect, should be preju-
dicial to it in the cardinal point of increase of population ? That it
is so, is the opinion expressed by most of those English political
economists who have written anything about the matter. Mr.
M'Culloch's opinion is well known. Mr. Jones affirras,f that a
" peasant population, raising their own wages from the soil, and
consuming them in kind, are universally acted upon very feebly by
internal checks, or by motives disposing them to restraint. The
consequence is, that unless some external cause, quite independent
of their will, forces such peasant cultivators to slacken their
rate of increase, they will, in a limited territory, very rapidly
approach a state of want and penury, and will be stopped at last

* See the celebrated fable of La Fontaine.
■f Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, p. 146.

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 37

only by the physical impossibility of procuring subsistence." He
elsewhere* speaks of such a peasantry as " exactly in the condition
in which the animal disposition to increase their numbers is checked
by the fewest of those balancing motives and desires which regulate
the increase of superior ranks or more civilized people." The
" causes of this peculiarity," Mr. Jones promised to point out in a
subsequent work, which never made its appearance. I am totally
unable to conjecture from what theory of human nature, and of the
motives which influence human conduct, he would have derived
them. Arthur Young assumes the same "peculiarity" as a fact;
but, though not much in the habit of qualifying his opinions, he
does not push his doctrine to so violent an extreme as Mr. Jones ;
having, as we have seen, himself testified to various instances in
which peasant populations, such as Mr. Jones speaks of, were not
tending to " a state of want and penury," and were in no danger
whatever of coming in contact with " physical impossibility of pro-
curing subsistence."

That there should be discrepancy of experience on this matter, is
easily to be accounted for. Whether the labouring people live by
land or by wages, they have always hitherto multiplied up to the
limit set by their habitual standard of comfort. When that stan-
dard was low, not exceeding a scanty subsistence, the size of pro-
perties, as well as the rate of wages, has been kept down to what
would barely support life. Extremely low ideas of what is neces-
sary for subsistence, are perfectly compatible with peasant proper-
ties ; and if a people have always been used to poverty, and habit
has reconciled them to it, there will be over-population, and exces
sive subdivision of land. But this is not to the purpose. The true
question is, supposing a peasantry to possess land not insufiicient
but sufficient for their comfortable support, are they more, or less,
likely to fall from this state of comfort through improvideht
multiplication, than if they were living in an equally comfortable
manner as hired labourers ? All ^priori considerations are in favour
of their being less likely. The dependence of wages on population

* Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, p. 68.

38 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

is a matter of speculation and discussion. That wages would fall
if population were much increased is often a matter of real doubt,
and always a thing which requires some exercise of the thinking
faculty for its intelligent recognition. But every peasant can satisfy
himself from evidence which he can fully appreciate, whether his
piece of land can be made to support several families in the same
comfort in which it supports one. Few people like to leave to their
children a worse lot in life than their own. The parent who has
land to leave, is perfectly able to judge whether the children can
live upon it or not : but people who are supported by wages, see
no reason why their sons should be unable to support themselves
in the same way, and trust accordingly to chance. "In even the
most useful and necessary arts and manufactures," says Mr. Laing,*
" the demand for labourers is not a seen, known, steady, and appre-
ciable demand : but it is so in husbandry" under small properties.
" The labour to be done, the subsistence that labour will produce
out of his portion of land, are seen and known elements in a man's
calculation upon his means of subsistence. Can his square of land,
or can it not, subsist a family ? Can he marry or not ? are questions
which every man can answer without delay, doubt, or speculation.
It is the depending on chance, where judgment has nothing clearly
set before it, that causes reckless, improvident marriages in the
lower, as in the higher classes, and produces among us the evils
of over-population; and chance necessarily enters into every
man's calculations, when certainty is removed altogether ; as it
is, where certain subsistence is, by our distribution of property,
the lot of but a small portion instead of about two-thirds of the
people."

There never has been a writer more keenly sensible of the evils
brought upon the labouring classes by excess of population, than
Sismondi, and this is one of the grounds of his earnest advocacy of
peasant properties. He had ample opportunity, in more countries
than one, for judging of their effect on population. Let us see his
testimony. " In the countries in which cultivation by small pro-

* Notes of a Traveller, p. 46.

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 39

prietors still continues, population increases regularly and rapidly
until it has attained its natural limits ; that is to say, inheritances
continue to be divided and subdivided among several sons, as long
as, by an increase of labour, each family can extract an equal
income from a smaller portion of land. A father who possessed a
vast extent of natural pasture, divides it among his sons, and they
turn it into fields and meadows ; his sons divide it among their
sons, who abolish fallows : each improvement in agricultural know-
ledge admits of another step in the subdivision of property. But
there is no danger lest the proprietor should bring up his children
to make beggars of them. He knows exactly what inheritance he
has to leave them ; he knows that the law will divide it equally
among them ; he sees the limit beyond which this division would
make them descend from the rank which he has himself filled, and
a just family pride, common to the peasant and to the nobleman,
makes him abstain from summoning into life, children for whom he
cannot properly provide. If more are born, at least they do not
marry, or they agree among themselves, which of several brothers
shall perpetuate the family. It is not found that in the Swiss
Cantons, the patrimonies of the peasants are ever so divided as to
reduce them below an honourable competence ; though the habit
of foreign service, by opening to the children a career indefinite
and uncalculable, sometimes calls forth a superabundant popu-
lation."*

There is similar testimony respecting Norway. Though there is
no law or custom of primogeniture, and no manufactures to take
off a surplus population, the subdivision of property is not carried
to an injurious extent. "The division of the land among children,"
says Mr. Laing,"j" " appears not, during the thousand years it has
been in operation, to have had the effect of reducing the landed
properties to the minimum size that will barely support human ex-
istence. I have counted from five- and- twenty to forty cows upon
farms, and that in a country in which the farmer must, for at least

* Nouveaux Principes, Book Hi. ch. 3.
t Residence in Norway, p. 18.

40 PEASANT PROPEIETORS.

seven months in the year, have winter provender and houses pro-
vided for all the cattle. It is evident that some cause or other,
operating on aggregation of landed property, counteracts the
dividing effects of partition among children. That cause can be
no other than what I have long conjectured would be effective in
such a social arrangement ; viz., that in a country where land is
held, not in tenancy merely, as in Ireland, but in full ownership,
its aggregation by the deaths of co-heirs, and by the marriages of
the female heirs among the body of landholders, will balance its
subdivision by the equal succession of children. The whole mass
of property will, I conceive, be found in such a state of society to
consist of as many estates of the class of 1000/., as many of 100/.,
as many of 10/., a year, at one period as at another." That this
should happen, supposes diffused through society a very efficacious
prudential check to population ; and it is reasonable to give part of
the credit of this prudential restraint to the peculiar adaptation of
the peasant-proprietary system for fostering it.

"In some parts of Switzerland," says Mr. Kay,* "as in the
canton of Argovie for instance, a peasant never marries before he
attains the age of twenty-five years, and generally much later in
life ; and in that canton the women very seldom marry before they
have attained the age of thirty. . . . Nor do the division of land
and the cheapness of the mode of conveying it from one man to
another, encourage the providence of the labourers of the rural dis-
tricts only. They act in the same manner, though perhaps in a
less degree, upon the labourers of the smaller towns. In the smaller
provincial towns it is customary for a labourer to own a small plot
of ground outside the town. This plot he cultivates in the evening
as his kitchen garden. He raises in it vegetables and fruits for the
use of his family during the winter. After his day's work is over,
he and his family repair to the garden for a short time, which they
spend in planting, sowing, weeding, or preparing for sowing or
harvest, according to the season. The desire to become possessed

• Vol. i. pp. 67-9.

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 41

of one of these gardens operates very strongly in strengthening
prudential habits and in restraining improvident marriages. Some
of the manufacturers in the canton of Argovie told me that a towns-
man was seldom contented until he had bought a garden, or a
garden and house, and that the town labourers generally deferred
their marriages for some years, in order to save enough to pvirchase
either one or both of these luxuries."

The same writer shows by statistical evidence* that in Prussia
the average age of marriage is not only much later than in
England, but " is gradually becoming later than it was for-
merly," while at the same time " fewer illegitimate children
are bom in Prussia than in any other of the European
countries." " Wherever I travelled," says Mr. Kay,f " in North
Germany and Switzerland, I was assured by all that the desire
to obtain land, which was felt by all the peasants, was acting
as the strongest possible check upon undue increase of popula-
tion."}

In Flanders, according to Mr. Fauche, the British Consul at
Ostend,§ " farmers' sons and those who have the means to become
farmers will delay their marriage until they get possession of a
farm." Once a farmer, the next object is to become a proprietor.
*' The first thing a Dane does with his savings," says Mr. Browne,
the Consul at Copenhagen, j| "is to purchase a clock, then a horse

* Vol. i. pp. 75-9. t Ibid. p. 90.

X The Prussian minister of statistics, in a work {Condition of the People
in Prussia) wliicli I am obliged to quote at second hand from Mr. Kay, after
proving by figures the great and progressive increase of the consumption of
food and clothing per head of the population, from which he justly infers a
corresponding increase of the productiveness of agriculture, continues : " The
division of estates has, since 1831, proceeded more and more throughout the
country. There are now many more small independent proprietors than
formerly. Yet, however many complaints of pauperism are heard among the
dependent labourers, we never hear it complained that pauperism is increasing
among the peasant proprietors." — Kay, i. 262-6.

§ In a communication to the Commissioners of Poor Law Enquiry, p. 640
of their Foreign Communications, Appendix F to their First Report.

II Ibid. 268.

42 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

and cow, which he hires out, and which pays a good interest.
Then his ambition is to become a petty proprietor, and this class
of persons is better off than any in Denmark. Indeed, I know of
no people in any country who have more easily within their reach
all that is really necessary for life than this class, which is very
large in comparison with that of labourers.' '

But the experience which most decidedly contradicts the asserted
tendency of peasant proprietorship to produce excess of population,
is the case of France. In that country the experiment is not tried
in the most favourable circumstances, a large proportion of the
properties being too small. The number of landed proprietors in
France is not exactly ascertained, but on no estimate does it fall
much short of five millions ; which, on the lowest calculation of
the number of persons of a family (and for France it ought to be
a low calculation), shows much more than half the population as
either possessing, or entitled to inherit, landed property. A
majority of the properties are so small as not to afford a subsistence
to the proprietors, of whom, according to some computations, as
many as three millions are obliged to eke out their means of support
either by working for hire, or by taking additional land, generally
on metayer tenure. When the property possessed is not sufficient
to relieve the possessor from dependence on wages, the condition of
a proprietor loses much of its characteristic efficacy as a check to
over-population : and if the prediction so often made in England
had been realized, and France had become a ' ' pauper warren," the
experiment would have proved nothing against the tendencies of the
same system of agriciiltural economy in other circumstances. But
what is the fact ? That the rate of increase of the French population
is the slowest in Europe. During the generation which the Revo-
lution raised from the extreme of hopeless wretchedness to sudden
abundance, a great increase of population took place. But a gene-
ration has grown up, which, having been bom in improved cir-
cumstances, has not learnt to be miserable ; and upon them the
spirit of thrift operates most conspicuously, in keeping the increase
of population within the increase of national wealth. In a table,

I

PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

43

drawn up by Professor Rati,* of the rate of annual increase of the
popvilations of various countries, that of France, from 1817 to 1827,
is stated at ^^ per cent, that of England during a similar decennial

* The following is the table (see p.
Rau's large work) :

United States . . .
Hungary (according
England

1820-30
to Rohrer)
1811-21 .
1821-31 .

Austria (Rohrer)
Prussia

Netherlands

1816-27
1820-30
1821-31
1821-28

Per cent.
. 2-92
2-40
1-78
1-60
1-30
1-54
1-37
1-27
1-28

168 of the Belgian translation of Mr.

Per cent.

Scotland 1821-31 . . 1-30

Saxony 1815-30 . . 1-15

Baden . . . 1820-30 (Heunisch) 1-13

Bavaria 1814-28 . . 1-08

Naples 1814-24 . . 0-83

France . . . 1817-27 (Mathieu) 063
and more recently (Moreau de
Jonnbs) 0*55

But the number given by Moreau de Jonnes, he adds, is not entitled to
implicit confidence.

The following table given By M. Quetelet (On Man and the Development of
his Faculties, vol. i. ch. 7), also on the authority of Rau, contains additional
matter, and differs in some items from the preceding, probably from the author's
having taken, in those cases, an average of different years :

Per cent.

Per cent.

Ireland 2-45

Hungary 2-40

Spain 1-66

England 1-65

Per cent.
Rhenish Prussia . 1"33

Austria 1'30

Bavaria 1-08

Netherlands . . . 0-94

Naples 0-83

France 0-63

Sweden 0*58

Lombardy .... 0*45

A very carefully prepared statement, by M. Legoyt, in the Journal des
JHconomistes for May 1847, which brings up the results for France to the census
of the preceding year 1846, is summed up iu the following table :

According
to the
census.

According to

the excess

of births ovei

deaths.

According
to the
census.

According to

the excess

of births over

deaths.

per cent.

per cent.

per cent.

per cent.

Sweden . .

0-83

114

Wurtemburg .

0-01

1-00

Norway . .

1-36

1-30

Holland . .

0-90

103

Denmark. .

...

0-95

Belgium . .

0-76

Russia . .

0-61

Sardinia . .

1-08

Austria . .

0-85

0-90

Great Britain

)

Prussia . .

1-84

1-18

(exclusive

U-95

1-00

Saxony • .

1-45

0-90

of Ireland)

)

Hanover . .

0-85

France . . .

0-68

0-50

Bavaria . .

...

0-71

United States.

3-27

^44 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

period being l-j^ annually, and that of the United States nearly 3.
According to the official returns as analysed by M. Legoyt,* the
increase of the population, which from 1801 to 1806 was at the
rate of 1*28 per cent annually, averaged only 0*47 per cent from
1806 to 1831 ; from 1831 to 1836 it averaged 0-60 per cent; from
1836 to 1841, 0-41 per cent, and from 1841 to 1846, 0*68 per
cent.f At the census of 1851 the rate of annual increase shown
was only 1*08 per cent in the five years, or 0*21 annually; and at
the census of 1856 only 071 per cent in five years, or 0*14 an-
nually : so that, in the words of M. de Lavergne, '* population has
almost ceased to increase in France."J Even this slow increase is
whoUy the effect of a diminution of deaths ; the number of births
not increasing at all, while the proportion of the births to the
population is constantly diminishing.§ This slow growth of the

* Journal des JEconomistes for March and May 1847.

\ M, Legoyt is of opinion that the population was understated in 1841, and
the increase between that time and 1846 consequently overstated, and that the
real increase during the whole period was something intermediate between the
last two averages, or not much more than one in two hundred.

X Journal des Economistes for February 1847. In the Journal for January
1865, M. Legoyt gives some of the numbers slightly altered, and I presume
corrected. The series of percentages is 1-28, 0-31, 0-69, 0-60, 0-41, 0-68, 0-22,
and 0'20. The last census, that of 1861, shows a slight reaction, the percentage,
independently of the newly acquired departments, being 0'32.

§ The following are the numbers given by M. Legoyt :

From 1824 to 1828 \ annual number ) ^ .^ g^-go \ °^ f f. P^"

( of births. J ' ' e> j pulation.

„ 1829 to 1833 „ 965,444, „ 1 in 34-00

„ 1834 to 1838 „ 972,993, „ 1 in 34-39

„ 1839 to 1843 „ 970,617, „ 1 in 3527

„ 1844 and 1845 „ 983,573, „ 1 in 35-58

In the last two years the births, according to M. Legoyt, were swelled by
the effects of considerable immigration. " This diminution of births," he ob-
serves, " while tliere is a constant, though not a rapid increase both of popula-
tion and of marriages, can only be attributed to the progress of prudence and
forethought in families. It was a foreseen consequence of our civil and social
institutions, which, producing a daily increasing subdivision of fortunes, both
landed and moveable, call forth in our people the instincts of conservation and
of comfort,"

In four departments, among which are two of the most thriving in Nor-
mandr, the deaths even then exceeded the births. The census of 1856 exhibits

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 45

numbers of the people, while capital increases much more rapidly,
has caused a noticeable improvement in the condition of the labour
ing class. The circumstances of that portion of the class who are
landed proprietors are not easily ascertained with precision, being
of course extremely variable ; but the mere labourers, who derived
no direct benefit from the changes in landed property which took place
at the Revolution, have unquestionably much improved in condition
since that period.* Dr. Rau testifies to a similar fact in the case

the remarkable fact of a positive diminution in the population of 54 out of the
86 departments. A significant comment on the pauper-warren theory. See M,
de Lavergne's analysis of the returns.

* " The classes of our population which have only wages, and are therefore
the most exposed to indigence, are now (184fi) much better provided with the
necessaries of food, lodging, and clothing, than they were at the besinning of
the century. This may be proved by the testimony of all persons who can re-
member the earlier of the two periods compared. Were there any doubts on tiie
subject, they might easily be dissipated by consultirfg old cultivators and workmen,
as I have myself done in various localities, without meeting with a single contrary
testimony ; we may also appeal to the facts collected by an accurate obsi rver,
M. Villerme, in his Picture of the Moral and Physical Condition of the Working
Classes, book ii. ch. 1." {Researches on the Causes of Indigence, by A. Clement,
pp. 84-5.) The same writer speaks (p. 118) of " the considerable rise which
has taken place since 1789 in the wages of agricultural day-labourers ;" and
adds the following evidence of a higher standard of habitual requirements, even
in that portion of the town population, the state of which is usually represented
as most deplorable. " In t e last fifteen or twenty years a considerable change
has taken place in the habits of the operatives in our manufacturing towns :
they now expend much more than formerly on clothing and ornament. . . Cer-
tain classes of workpeople, such as the canuts of Lyons," (according to all represen-
tations, like their counterpart, our handloom weavers, the very worst paid class
of artizans.) " no longer show themselves, as they did formerly, covered with
filthy rags." (Page 164.)

The preceding statements were given in former editions of the " Principles of
Political Economy," being the best to which I had at the time access ; but evi-
dence, both of a more recent, and of a more minute and precise character, will
now be found in the important work of M. Leonce de Lavergne, Rural Eeonomtf
of France since 1789. According to that pains-taking, well-informed, and most
impartial enquirer, the average daily wages of a French labourer have risen, since
the commencement of the Revolution, in the ratio of 19 to 30, while, owing to
the more constant employment, the total earnings have increased in a still
greater ratio, not short of double. The following are the statements of M. de
Lavergne (2nd ed. p. 57) :

" Arthur Young estimates at 19 sous [9'2rf.] the average of a day's wages,
which must now be about 1 franc 50 centim»i3 [1*. 3ti.], and this increase only

46 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

of another country in which the subdivision of the land is probably
excessive, the Palatinate.*

I am not aware of a single authentic instance which supports the
assertion that rapid multiplication is promoted by peasant properties.
Instances may undoubtedly be cited of its not being prevented by
them, and one of the principal of these is Belgium ; the prospects
of which, in respect to population, are at present a matter of con-
siderable uncertainty. Belgium has the most rapidly increasing
population on the Continent ; and when the circumstances of the
country require, as they must soon do, that this rapidity should be
checked, there will be a considerable strength of existing habit to

represents a part of the improvement. Though the rural population has re-
mained about the same in numbers, the addition made to the population since
1789 having centred in the towns, the number of actual working days has in-
creased, first because, the duration of life having augmented, the number of
able-bodied men is greater, and next, because labour is better organized, partly
through the suppression of several festival-holidays, partly by the mere effect
of a more active demand. When we take into account the increased number
of his working days, the annual receipts of the rural workman must have
doubled. This augmentation of wages answers to at least an equal augmenta-
tion of comforts, since the prices of the chief necessaries of life have changed
but little, and those of manufactured, for example of woven, articles, have ma-
terially diminished. The lodging of tue labourers has also improved, if not in
all, at least in most of our provinces."

M. de Lavergne's estimate of the average amount of a day's wages is
grounded on a careful comparison, in this and all other economical points of
view, of all the different provinces of France.

* In his little book on the Agriculture of the Palatinate, already cited. He
says that the daily wages of labour, which during the last years of the war were
unusually high, and so continued until 1817, afterwards sank to a lower money-
rate, but that the prices of many commodities having lallen in a still greater
proportion, the condition of the people was unequivocally improved. The food
given to farm labourers by their employers has also greatly improved in quan-
tity and quality. " It is now considerably better than about forty years ago,
when the poorer class obtained less flesh-meat and puddings, and no cheese,
butter, and the like." (p. 20.) " Such an increase of wages " (adds the Pro-
fessor) " which must be estimated not in money, but in the quantity of neces-
saries and conveniences which the labourer is enabled to procure, is by universal
admission, a proof that the mass of capital must have increased." It proves
not only this, but also that the labouring population has not increased in an
equal degrte ; and that in this instance as well as in France, the division of the
land, even when excessive, has been compatible with a strengthening of the
prudential checks to population.

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 47

be broken through. One of the unfavourable circumstances is the
great power possessed over the minds of the people by the Catholic
priesthood, whose influence is everywhere strongly exerted against
restraining population. As yet, however, it must be remembered that
the indefatigable industry and great agricultural skiU of the people
have rendered the existing rapidity of increase practically inno-
cuous ; the great number of large estates still undivided affording
by their gradual dismemberment, a resource for the necessary
augmentation of the gross produce ; and there are, besides, many
large manufacturing towns, and mining and coal districts, which
attract and employ a considerable portion of the annual increase of
population.

§ 5. But even where peasant properties are accompanied by an
excess of numbers, this evil is not necessarily attended with the
additional economical disadvantage of too great a subdivision of the
land. It does not foUow because landed property is minutely
divided, that farms will be so. As large properties are perfectly
compatible with small farms, so are small properties with farms ol
an adequate size ; and a subdivision of occupancy is not an in-
evitable consequence of even undue multiplication among peasant
proprietors. As might be expected from their admirable intelligence
in things relating to their occupation, the Flemish peasantry have
long learnt this lesson. " The habit of not dividing properties,"
says Dr. Eau,* "and the opinion that this is advantageous, have
been so completely preserved in Flanders, that even now, when a.
peasant dies leaving several children, they do not think of dividing
his patrimony, though it be neither entailed nor settled in trust ;
they prefer selling it entire, and sharing the proceeds, considering
it as a jewel which loses its value when it is divided." That the
same feeling must prevail widely even in France, is shown by the
great frequency of sales of land, amounting in ten years to a fourth
part of the whole soil of the country : and M. Passy, in his tract

* Page 334 of the Bmssels translation. He cites as an authority, Schwerz,
Tapers on Agriculture, i. 185.

48 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

" On the Changes in the Agricultural Condition of the Department
of the Eure since the year 1800,"* states other facts tending to
the same conclusion, *' The example," says he, "of this depart-
ment attests that there does not exist, as some writers have
imagined, between the distribution of property and that of culti-
yation, a connexion which tends invincibly to assimilate them. In
no portion of it have changes of ownership had a perceptible in-
fluence on the size of holdings. While, in districts of small farming,
lands belonging to the same owner are ordinarily distributed among
many tenants, so neither is it uncommon, in places where the grande
culture prevails, for the same farmer to rent the lands of several
proprietors. In the plains of Vexin, in particular, many active
and rich cultivators do not content themselves with a single farm ;
others add to the lands of their principal holding, all those in the
neighbourhood which they are able to hire, and in this manner
make up a total extent which in some cases reaches or exceeds
two hundred hectares" (five hundred English acres). " The more
the estates are dismembered, the more frequent do this sort of
arrangements become : and as they conduce to the interest of all
concerned, it is probable that time will confirm them."

"In some places," says M. de Lavergne,"}" " in the neighbourhood
of Paris, for example, where the advantages of the grande culture
become evident, the size of farms tends to increase, several farms
are thrown together into one, and farmers enlarge their holdings
by renting parcelles from a number of different proprietors. Else-
where farms as well as properties of too great extent, tend to
division. Cultivation spontaneously finds out the organization
which suits it best." It is a striking fact, stated by the same
eminent writer,^ that the departments which have the greatest
number of small separate accounts with the tax-collector, are the

* One of the many important papers which have appeared in the Journal
des JEconomistes, the organ of the principal political economists of France, and
doing great and increasing honour to their knowledge and ability. M. Passy's
essay has been reprinted separately as a pamphlet.

■)■ Rural Economy of France, p. 455.

t P. 117. See, for facts of a similar tendency, pp. 141, 250, and other

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 49

Nord, the Somme, the Pas de Calais, the Seine Inferieiire, the Aisne,
and the Oise ; all of them among the richest and best cultivated,
and the first-mentioned of them the very richest and best culti-
vated, in France.

Undue subdivision, and excessive smallness of holdings, are un-
doubtedly a prevalent evil in some countries of peasant proprietors,
and particularly in parts of Germany and France. The governments
of Bavaria and Nassau have thought it necessary to impose a legal limit
to subdivision, and the Prussian Government unsuccessfully proposed
the same measure to the Estates of its Rhenish Provinces.. But I do
)'ot think it will anywhere be found that the petite culture is the sys-
em of the peasants, and the grande culture that of the great landlords :
(jn the contrary, wherever the small properties are divided among
ioo many proprietors, I believe it to be true that the large properties
also are parcelled out among too many farmers, and that the cause
is the same in both cases, a backward state of capital, skill, and
agricultural enterprise. There is reason to believe that the sub-
division in France is not more excessive than is accounted for by
this cause ; that it is diminishing, not increasing ; and that the terror
expressed in some quarters, at the progress of the morcellement, is
one of the most groundless of real or pretended panics.*

If peasant properties have any effect in promoting subdivision
beyond the degree which corresponds to the agricultural practices

passages of the same important treatise : which, ou the other hand, equally
abounds with evidence of the mischievous efiect of subdivision when too minute,
or when the nature of the soil and of its products is not suitable to it.

* Mr. Laing, in his latest publication, "Observations on the Social and
Political State of the European People in 1848 and 1849," a book devoted to
the glorification of England, and the disparagement of everything elsewhere
which others, or even he himself in former works, had thought worthy of
praise, argues that " although the land itself is not divided and subdivided " on
the death of the proprietor, " the value of the land is, and with eifects almost
as prejudicial to social progress. The value of each share becomes a debt or
burden upon the land." Consequently the condition of the agricultural popula-
tion is retrograde; " each generation is worse ofl" than the preceding one, although
the land is neither less nor more divided, nor worse cultivated." And this he
gives as the explanation of the great indebtedness of the small landed pro-
prietors in France (pp. 97-9). If these statements were correct, thi-y would
invalidate all which Mr. Laing affirmed so positively in other writiugy, and

£

50 PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

of the country, and which is customary on its large estates, the cause
must lie in one of the salutary influences of the system ; the eminent
degree in which it promotes providence on the part of those who, not
being yet peasant proprietors, hope to become so. In England, where
the agricultural labourer has no investment for his savings but
the savings bank, and no position to which he can rise by any
exercise of economy, except perhaps that of a petty shopkeeper, with
its chances of bankruptcy, there is nothing at all resembling the in-
tense spirit of thrift which takes possession of one who, from bemg
a day labourer, can raise himself by saving to the condition of a
landed proprietor. According to almost all authorities, the real cause
of the minute subdivision is the higher price which can be obtained
for land by selling it to the peasantry, as an investment for their
small accumulations, than by disposing of it entire to some rich
purchaser Avho has no object but to live on its income, without
improving it. The hope of obtaining such an investment is the
most powerful of inducements, to those who are without land, to
practise the industry, frugality, and self-restraint, on which their
success in this object of ambition is dependent.

As the result of this enquiry into the direct operation and indirect
influences of peasant properties, I conceive it to be established,
that there is no necessary connexion between this form of landed
property and an imperfect state of the arts of production ; that it

repeats in this, respecting the peculiar efficacy of the possession of land in pre-
venting over-population. But he is entirely mistaken as to the matter of fact.
In the only country of which he speaks from actual residence, Norway, he
does not pretend that the condition of the peasant proprietors is deteriorating.
The facts already cited prove that in respect to Belgium, Germany, and Switzer-
land, the assertion is equally wide of the mark ; and what has heen shown
respecting the slow increase of population in France, demonstrates that if the
condition of the French peasantry was deteriorating, it could not be from the
cause supposed by Mr. Laing. Tlie truth I believe to be that in every country
without exception, in which peasant properties prevail, the condition of the
people is improving, the produce of the land and even its fertility increasing,
and from the larger surplus which remains after feeding the agricultural classes,
the towns are augmenting both in population and in the well-being of their
inhabitants. On this question, as well as on that of the subdivision, so far as
regards France, additional facts and observations, brought up to a later date,
will be found in the Appendix to the first volume of " Principles of Political
Economy."

PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 61

is favourable in quite as many respects as it is unfavourable, to the
most effective use of the powers of the soU ; that no other existing
state of agricultural economy has so beneficial an effect on the
industry, the intelligence, the frugality, and prudence of the popu-
lation, nor tends on the whole so much to discourage an improvi-
dent increase of their numbers ; and that no existing state, therefore,
is on the whole so favourable, both to their moral and their physical
welfare. Compared with the English system of cultivation by hired
labour, it must be regarded as eminently beneficial to the labouring
class.* We are not on the present occasion called upon to compare
it with the joint ownership of the land by associations of labourers.

* French history strikingly confirms these conclusions. Three times during
the course of ages the peasantry have been purchasers of land ; and these times
immediately preceded the three principal eras of French agricultural prosperity.

" In the worst times," says the historian Michelet {The People, Part i. ch. 1),
" the times of universal poverty, when even the rich are poor and obliged to
sell, the poor are enabled to buy : no other purchaser presenting himself, the
peasant in rags arrives with his piece of gold, and acquires a little bit of land.
These moments of disaster in which the peasant was able to buy land at a low
price, have always been followed by a sudden gush of prosperity which people
could not account for. Towards 1500, for example, when France, exhausted
by Louis XI., seemed to be completing its ruin in Italy, the noblesse who went
to the wars were obliged to sell : the land, passing into new hands, suddenly
began to flourish ; men began to labour and to build. This happy moment, in
the style of courtly historians, was called the good Louis XII.

" Unhappily it did not last long. Scarcely had the land recovered itself when
the tax-collector fell upon it; the wars of religion followed, and seemed to rase
everything to the ground ; with horrible miseries, dreadful famines, in which
mothers devoured their children. Who would believe that the country recovered
from this ? Scarcely is the war ended, when from the devastated fields, and the
cottages still black with the flames, comes forth the hoard of the peasant. He
buys ; in ten years, France wears a new face ; in twenty or thirty, all possessions
Lave doubled and trebled in value. This moment, again baptized by a royal
name, is called tTie good Henry IV. and the great Richelieu."

Of the third era it is needless again to speak : it was that of the Revolution.

Whoever would study the reverse of the picture, may compare these historic
periods, characterized by the dismemberment of large and the construction of
small properties, with the wide-spread national suftering which accompanied,
and the permanent deterioration of the condition of the labouring classes which
followed, the " clearing " away of small yeomen to make room for large grazing
forms, which was the grand economical event of English history during the
sixteenth century.

E 2

OP METAYERS.

§ 1. From the case in which the produce of land and labour
belongs undividedly to the labourer, we proceed to the cases in
which it is divided, but between two classes only, the labourers and
the landowners : the character of capitalists merging in the one or
the other, as the case may be. It is possible indeed to conceive
that there might be only two classes of persons to share the produce,
and that a class of capitalists might be one of them ; the character
of labourer and that of landowner being united to form the
other. This might occur in two ways. The labourers, though
owning the land, might let it to a tenant, and work under him as
hired servants. But this arrangement, even in the very rare cases
which could give rise to it, would not require any particular dis-
cussion, since it would not differ in any material respect from the
threefold system of labourers, capitalists, and landlords. The other
case is the not uncommon one, in which a peasant proprietor owns
and cultivates the land, but raises the little capital required, by
a mortgage upon it. Neither does this case present any important
peculiarity. There is but one person, the peasant himself, who
has any right or power of interference in the management. He
pays a fixed annuity as interest to a capitalist, as he pays another
fixed sum in taxes to the government. Without dwelling further on
these cases, we pass to those which present marked features of pecu-
liarity.

METAYERS. S3

When the two parties sharing in the produce are the labourer or
labourers and the landowner, it is not a very material circumstance
in the case, which of the two furnishes the stock, or whether, as
sometimes happens, they furnish it, in a determinate proportion,
between them. The essential difference does not lie in this, but in
another circumstance, namely, whether the division of the produce
between the two is regulated by custom or by competition. We
will begin with the former case ; of which the metayer culture is
the principal, and in Europe almost the sole, example.

The principle of the metayer system, is that the labourer, or
peasant, makes his engagement directly with the landowner, and
pays, not a fixed rent, either in money or in kind, but a certain
proportion of the produce, or rather of what remains of the produce
after deducting what is considered necessary to keep up the stock.
The proportion is usually, as the name imports, one-half; but in
several districts in Italy it is two-thirds. Respecting the supply of
stock, the custom varies from place to place ; in some places the
landlord furnishes the whole, in others half, in others some par-
ticular part, as for instance the cattle and seed, the labourer provid-
ing the implements.*. "This connexion," says Sismondi, speaking
chiefly of Tuscany,! " is often the subject of a contract, to define

* In France before the Revolution, according to Arthur Young (i. 403)
there was great local diversity in this respect. In Champagne "the land-
lord commonly finds half the cattle and half the seed, and the metayer, labour,
implements, and taxes ; but in some districts the landlord bears a share of these.
In Roussillon, the landlord pays half the taxes ; and in Guienne, from Audi to
Fleuran, many landlords pay all. Near Aguillon, on the Garonne, the metayers
furnish half the cattle. At Nangia, in the Isle of France, I met with an agree-
ment for the landlord to furnish live stock, implements, harness, and taxes; the
metayer found labour and his own capitation tax : the landlord repaired the
house and gates ; the metayer the windows : the landlord provided seed the
first year, the metayer the last j in the intervening years they supply half and
half. In the Bourbonnois the landlord finds all sorts of live stock, yet the
metayer sells, changes, and btiys at his will j the steward keeping an account
of these mutations, for the landlord has half the product of sales, and pays
half the purchases." In Piedmont, he says, " the landlord commonly pays the
taxes and repairs the buildings, and the tenant provides cattle, implements, and
seed." (II. 151.)

f Studies in Political JEconomff, Essay VI. On the Condition of the Culti-
vators in Tuscany.

54 METAYERS.

certain services and certain occasional payments to which the
metayer binds himself; nevertheless the differences in the obliga-
tions of one such contract and another are inconsiderable ; usage
governs alike all these engagements, and supplies the stipulations
which have not been expressed ; and the landlord who attempted to
depart from usage, who exacted more than his neighbour, who
took for the basis of the agreement anything but the equal division
of the crops, would render himself so odious, he would be so sure
of not obtaining a metayer who was an honest man, that the con-
tract of all the metayers may be considered as identical, at least in
each province, and never gives rise to any competition among
peasants in search of employment, or any offer to cultivate the
soil on cheaper terms than one another." To the same effect
Chateauvieux,* speaking of the metayers of Piedmont. " They
consider it," (the farm) " as a patrimony, and never think of renew-
ing the lease, but go on from generation to generation, on the same
terms, without writings or registries."!

§ 2. When the partition of the produce is a matter of fixed
usage, not of varying convention, political economy has no laws of
distribution to investigate. It has only to consider, as in the case
of peasant proprietors, the effects of the system first on the condition
of the peasantry, morally and physically, and secondly, on the
efficiency of the labour. In both these particulars the metayer
system has the characteristic advantages of peasant properties, but
has them in a less degree. The metayer has less motive to exertion
than the peasant proprietor, since only half the fruits of his

* Letters from Italy. I quote from Dr. Ri^by's translation (p. 22).
f This virtual fixity of tenure is not however universfil even in Italy ; and
it is to its absence that Sismondi attributes the inferior condition of the
metayers in some provinces of Naples, in Lucca, and in the Riviera of Genoa j
where the landlords obtain a larger (though still a fixed) share of the produce.
In those countries the cultivation is splendid, but the people wretcliedly poor.
" The same misfortune would probably have befallen the people of Tuscany if
public opinion did not protect the cultivator ; but a proprietor would not dare
to impose conditions unusual in the country, and even in changing one metayer
for another he alters nothing in the terms of the engagement." New Prin-
ciples of Political Economy, book iii. ch. 5.

METAYERS. 55

industry, instead of the whole, are his own. But he has a much
stronger motive than a day labourer, who has no other interest in
the result than not to be dismissed. If the metayer cannot be
turned out except for some violation of his contract, he has a
stronger motive to exertion than any tenant farmer who has not a
lease. The metayer is at least his landlord's partner, and a half-
sharer in their joint gains. Where, too, the permanence of his
tenure is guaranteed by custom, he acquires local attachments, and
much of the feelings of a proprietor. I am supposing that this half
produce is sufficient to yield him a comfortable support. Whether
it is so, depends (in any given state of agriculture) on the degree
of subdivision of the land ; which depends on the operation of the
population principle. A multiplication of people, beyond the
number that can be properly supported on the land or taken off by
manufactures, is incident even to a peasant proprietary, and of
course not less but rather more incident to a metayer population.
The tendency, however, which we noticed in the proprietary system,
to promote prudence on this point, is in no small degree common
to it with the metayer system. There, also, it is a matter of easy and
exact calculation whether a family can be supported or not. If it is
easy to see whether the owner of the whole produce can increase
the production so as to maintain a greater number of persons equally
well, it is a not less simple problem whether the owner of half the
produce can do so.* There is one check which this system seems
to offer, over and above those held out even by the proprietary
system ; there is a landlord, who may exert a controlling power, by

* M. Bastiat affirms that even in France, incontestably the least favourable
example of the metayer system, its effect in repressing population is conspicuous.
" It is a well-ascertained fact that the tendency to excessive multiplication is
chiefly manifested in the class who live on wages. Over these the forethought
which retards marriages has little operation, because the evils which flow from
excessive competition appear to them only very confusedly, and at a considerable
distance. It is, therefore, the most advantageous condition of a people to be so
organized as to contain no regular class of labourers for hire. In metayer coun-
tries, marriages are principally determined by the demands of cultivation ; they
increase when, from whatever cause, the mutairies ofier vacancies injurious to

56 METAYERS.

refusing his consent to a subdivision. I do not, however, attach
great importance to this check, because the farm may be loaded
with superfluous hands without being subdivided ; and because,
so long as the increase of hands increases the gross produce, which
is almost always the case, the landlord, who receives half the
produce, is an immediate gainer, the inconvenience falling only
on the labourers. The landlord is no doubt liable in the end
to suffer from their poverty, by being forced to make advances to
them, especially in bad seasons ; and a foresight of this ultimate
inconvenience may operate beneficially on such landlords as prefer
future security to present profit.

The characteristic disadvantage of the metayer system is very
fairly stated by Adam Smith. After pointing out that rpetayers
" have a plain interest that the whole produce should be as great as
possible, in order that their own proportion may be so," he con-
tinues,* "it could never, however, be the interest of this species of
cultivators to lay out, in the further improvement of the land, any
part of the little stock which they might save from their own share
of the produce, because the lord who laid out nothing, was to get
one-half of whatever it produced. The tithe, which is but a tenth
of the produce, is found to be a very great hindrance to improve-
ment. A tax, therefore, which amounted to one-half, must have
been an effectual bar to it. It might be the interest of a metayer
to make the land produce as much as could be brought out of it by
means of the stock furnished by the proprietor ; but it could
never be his interest to mix any part of his own with it. In
France, where five parts out of six of the whole kingdom are said
to be still occupied by this species of cultivators, the proprietors
complain that their metayers take every opportunity of employing

pi'odnction ; they dimmish wlien tlie places are filled up. A fact easily ascer-
tained, the proportion between the size of the farm and the number of hands,
operates lil<e forethought, and with greater effect. We find, accordingly, that
when nothing occurs to make an o|)ening for a superfluous population, numbers
remain stationary : as is seen in our southern departments." Considerations on
Metayage, in the Jou/rnal des Economistes for February, 1846.

* Wealth of Nations, book iii. eh. 2.

METAYERS. 57

the master's cattle ratlier in carriage than in cultivation ; because
in the one case they get the whole profits to themselves, in the other
they share them with their landlord."

It is indeed implied in the very nature of the tenure, that all im-
provements which require expenditure of capital must be made
with the capital of the landlord. This, however, is essentially the
case even in England, whenever the farmers are tenants-at-wiU : or
(if Arthur Young is right) even on a " nine years lease." If the
landlord is willing to provide capital for improvements, the metayer
has the strongest interest in promoting them, since half the benefit
of them will accrue to himself. As however the perpetuity of
tenure which, in the case we are discussing, he enjoys by custom,
renders his consent a necessary condition ; the spirit of routine, and
dislike of innovation, characteristic of an agricultural people when
not corrected by education, are no doubt, as the advocates of the
system seem to admit, a serious hindrance to improvement.

§ 3. The metayer system has met with no mercy from English
authorities. " There is not one word to be said in favour of the
practice," says Arthur Young,* and a " thousand arguments thaj;
might be used against it. The hard plea of necessity can alone be
urged in its favour ; the poverty of the farmers being so great,
that the landlord must stock the farm, or it could not be stocked
at all : this is a most cruel burthen to a proprietor, who is thus
obliged to run much of the hazard of farming in the most dangerous
of all methods, that of trusting his property absolutely in the hands
of people who are generally ignorant, many careless, and some un-
doubtedly wicked. ... In this most miserable of all the
modes of letting land, the defrauded landlord receives a contemp-
tible rent ; the farmer is in the lowest state of poverty ; the land
is miserably cultivated ; and the nation suffers as severely as the
parties themselves, . . . Wherever^ this system prevails, it may
be taken for granted that a useless and miserable population is

Travels, vol. i. pp. 404-5. f Ibid. vol. ii. 151-3.

68 METAYERS.

found. . . . Wherever the country (that I saw) is poor and un-
watered, in the Milanese, it is in the hands of metayers :" they are
almost always in debt to their landlord for seed or food, and " their
condition is more wretched than that of a day labourer. . . .
There* are but few districts" (in Italy) " where lands are let to
the occupying tenant at a money -rent ; but wherever it is found,
their crops are greater ; a clear proof of the imbecility of the
metaying system." " Wherever it" (the metayer system) " has
been adopted," says Mr. M'Culloch,'|" "it has put a stop to all im-
provement, and has reduced the cultivators to the most abject
poverty." Mr. Jones;}; shares the common opinion, and quotes
Turgot and Destutt-Tracy in support of it. The impression, how-
ever, of all these writers (notwithstanding Arthur Young's occasional
referencesto Italy) seemsto be chiefly derived from France, and France
before the Revolution.§ Now the situation of French metayers under
the old regime by no means represents the typical form of the contract.
It is essential to that form, that the proprietor pays all the taxes.
But in France the exemption of the noblesse from direct taxation
had led the Government to throw the whole burthen of their ever-
increasing fiscal exactions upon the occupiers : and it is to these
exactions that Turgot ascribed the extreme wretchedness of the
metayers : a wretchedness in some cases so excessive, that in
Limousin and Angoumois (the provinces which he administered)

* Travels, vol. ii. 217.
■j- Principles of Political Economy, 3rd ed. p. 471.
j Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, pp. 102-4.

§ M. de Tracy is partially an exception, inasmuch as his experience reaches
lower down than the revolutionary period ; but he admits (as Mr. Jones has
himself stated in another place) that he is acquainted only with a limited dis-
trict, of great subdivision and unfertile soil.

M. Passy is of opinion, that a French peasantry must be in indigence and
the country badly cultivated on a metayer system, because the proportion of
the produce claimable by the landlord is too high ; it being only in more favour-
able climates that any land, not of the most exuberant fertility, can pay half
its gross produce in rent, and leave enough to peasant farmers to enable them
to grow successfully the more expensive and valuable products of agricul-
ture. {On Systems of Culture, p. 35.) This is an objection only to a particular
numerical proportion, which is indeed the common one, but is not essential to
the system.

METAYEES. 59

they had seldom more, according to him, after deducting all burthens,
than from twenty-five to thirty livres (20 to 24 shillings) per head
for their whole annual consumption : "I do not mean in money,
but including all that they consume in kind from their own
crops."* When we add that they had not the virtual fixity of
tenure of the metayers of Italy, (" in Limousin," says Arthur
Young,! " *^^ metayers are considered as little better than menial
servants, removable at pleasure, and obliged to conform in all things
to the wiU of the landlords,") it is evident that their case affords no
argument against the metayer system in its better form. A popula-
tion who could call nothing their own — who, Uke the Irish cottiers,
could not in any contingency be worse ofi" — had nothing to restrain
them from multiplying, and subdividing the land, until stopped by
actual starvation.

We shall find a very difierent picture, by the most accurate
authorities, of the metayer cviltivation of Italy. In the first place,
as to subdivision. In Lombardy, according to Chateauvieux,J
there are few farms which exceed sixty acres, and few which have
less than ten. These farms are all occupied by metayers at half
profit. They invariably display " an extent§ and a richness in
buildings rarely known in any other country in Europe." Their
plan " afibrds the greatest room with the least extent of building ;
is best adapted to arrange and secure the crop ; and is, at the same
time, the most economical, and the least exposed to accidents by
fire." The court-yard " exhibits a whole so regular and commo-
dious, and a system of such care and good order, that our dirty and
ill-arranged farms can convey no adequate idea of" The same

* See the " Memoir on the Surcharge of Taxes suflFered by the Generality of
Limoges, addressed to the Council of State in 1786," pp. 260-304 of the fourth
volume of Turgot's Works. The occasional engagements of landlords (as men-
tioned by Arthur Young) to pay a part of the taxes, were, according to Turgot,
of recent origin, under the compulsion of actual necessity. " The proprietor
only consents to it when he can lind no metayer on other terms ; consequently,
even in that case, the metayer is always reduced to what is barely sufficient to
prevent him from dying of hunger." (p. 275).
t Vol. i. p. 40 k

J Letters from Italy, translated by Kigby, p. 16. § Ibid. pp. 19, 20.

60 METAYERS.

description applies to Piedmont. The rotation of crops is excellent.
" I should think* no country can bring so large a portion of its
produce to market as Piedmont." Though the soil is not naturally
very fertile, " the number of cities is prodigiously great." The
agriculture must, therefore, be eminently favourable to the net as
well as to the gross produce of the land. " Each plough works
thirty-two acres in the season. . . . Nothing can be more
perfect or neater than the hoeing and moulding up the maize, when
in full growth, by a single plough, with a pair of oxen, with-
out injury to a single plant, while all the weeds are effectually
destroyed." So much for agricultural skill. "Nothing can be so
excellent as the crop which precedes and that which follows it."
The wheat " is thrashed by a cylinder, drawn by a horse, and
guided by a boy, while the labourers turn over the straw with
forks. This process lasts nearly a fortnight; it is quick and

economical, and completely gets out the grain In

no part of the world are the economy and the management of the
land better understood than in Piedmont, and this explains the
phenomenon of its great population, and immense export of pro-
visions." All this under metayer cultivation.

Of the valley of the Amo, in its whole extent, both above and
below Florence, the same writer thus speaks :f — " Forests of olive-
trees covered the lower parts of the mountains, and by their foliage
concealed an infinite number of small farms, which peopled these
parts of the mountains ; chestnut-trees raised their heads on the
higher slopes, their healthy verdure contrasting with the pale tint of
the olive-trees, and spreading a brightness over this amphitheatre.
The road was bordered on each side with village-houses, not more

than a hundred paces from each other They are placed at

a little distance from the road, and separated from it by a wall, and
a terrace of some feet in extent. On the wall are commonly placed
many vases of antique forms, in which flowers, aloes, and yoimg
orange trees are growing. The house itself is completely covered with

* Letters from Italy, pp. 24-31.
f Ibid. pp. 78-y.

METAYERS. 61

^nes Before these houses we saw groups of peasant

females dressed in white linen, silk corsets, and straw-hats, orna-
mented with flowers These houses being so near each

other, it is evident that the land annexed to them must be small, and
that property, in these valleys, must be very much divided ; the
extent of these domains being from three to ten acres. The land
lies round the houses, and is divided into fields by small canals, or
rows of trees, some of which are mulberry-trees, but the greatest
number poplars, the leaves of which are eaten by the cattle. Each

tree supports a vine These divisions, arrayed in

oblong squares, are large enough to be cultivated by a plough with-
out wheels, and a pair of oxen. There is a pair of oxen between
ten or twelve of the farmers ; they employ them successively in

the cultivation of all the farms Almost every farm

maintains a well-looking horse, which goes in a small two-wheeled
cart, neatly made, and painted red ; they serve for all the purposes
of draught for the farm, and also to convey the farmer's daughters to
mass and to balls. Thus, on holidays, hundreds of these little carts
are seen flying in all directions, carrying the young women, deco-
rated with flowers and ribbons."

This is not a picture of poverty ; and so far as agriculture is con-
cerned, it effectually redeems metayer cultivation, as existing in
these countries, from the reproaches of English writers ; but with
•respect to the condition of the cultivators, Chateauvieux's testimony
is, in some points, not so favourable. " It is* neither' the natural
fertility of the soil, nor the abundance which strikes the eye of the
traveller, which constitute the well-being of its inhabitants. It is
the number of individuals among whom the total produce is divided,
which fixes the portion that each is enabled to enjoy. Here it is
very small. I have thus far, indeed, exhibited a delightful country,
well watered, fertile, and covered with a perpetual vegetation ; I have
shown it divided into coimtless enclosures, which, like so many
beds in a garden, display a thousand varying productions ; I
have shown, that to all these enclosures are attached well-built

* Letters from Italy, pp. 73-6.

62 METAYERS.

houses, clothed with vines, and decorated with flowers ; but, on
entering them, we find a total want of all the conveniences of life,
a table more than frugal, and a general appearance of privation."
Is not Chateauvieux here unconsciously contrasting the condition of
the metayers with that of the farmers of other countries, when the
proper standard with which to compare it is that of the agricultural
day-labourers ?

Arthur Young says,* " I was assured that these metayers are
(especially near Florence) much at their ease ; that on holidays they
are dressed remarkably well, and not without objects of luxury, as
silver, gold, and silk ; and live well, on plenty of bread, wine, and
legumes. In some instances this may possibly be the case, but the
general fact is contrary. It is absurd to think that metayers, upon
such a farm as is cultivated by a pair of oxen, can live at their ease;
and a clear proof of their poverty is this, that the landlord, who
provides half the live stock, is often obliged to lend the peasant
money to procure his half. .... The metayers, not in the
vicinity of the city, are so poor, that landlords even lend them com
to eat : their food is black bread, made of a mixture with vetches ;
and their drink is very little wine, mixed with water, and called
aqnarolle ; meat on Sundays only ; their dress very ordinary."
Mr. Jones admits the superior comfort of the metayers near Florence,
and attributes it partly to straw-platting, by which the women of
the peasantry can earn, according to Chateauvieux, f from fifteen to
twenty pence a day. But even this fact tells in favour of the
metayer system ; for in those parts of England in which either straw-
platting or lace-making is carried on by the women and children of
the labouring class, as in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, the
condition of the class is not better, but rather worse than elsewhere,
the wages of agricultural labour being depressed by a full equivalent.

In spite of Chateauvieux's statement respecting the poverty of the
metayers, his opinion, in respect to Italy at least, is given in favour
of the system. " It occupies^ and constantly interests the proprietors,

* Travels, voL ii. p. 156. t Letters from Italy, p. 75.

X Ibid. pp. 295 -6.

METAYERS. 63

which is never the case with great proprietors who lease their
estates at fixed rents. It establishes a community of interests, and
relations of kindness between the proprietors and the metayers ; a
kindness which I have often witnessed, and from which result
great advantages in the moral condition of society. The proprietor,
under this system, always interested in the success of the crop,
never refuses to make an advance upon it, which the land promises
to repay with interest. It is by these advances and by the hope
thus inspired, that the rich proprietors of land have gradually
perfected the whole rural economy of Italy. It is to them that it
owes the numerous systems of irrigation which water its soil, as
also the establishment of the terrace culture on the hills : gradual
but permanent improvements, which common peasants, for want of
means, could never have effected, and which could never have been
accomplished by the farmers, nor by the great proprietors who let
their estates at fixed rents, because they are not sufliciently inte-
rested. Thus the interested system forms of itself that alliance
between the rich proprietor, whose means provide for the improve-
ment of the culture, and the metayer whose care and labours are di-
rected, by a common interest, to make the most of these advances."

But the testimony most favourable to the system is that of Sia-
mondi, which has the advantage of being specific, and from accu-
rate knowledge ; his information being not that of a traveller, but
that of a resident proprietor, intimately acquainted with rural life.
His statements apply to Tuscany generally, and more particularly to
the Val di Nievole, in which his own property lay, and which is
not within the supposed privileged circle immediately round
Florence. It is one of the districts in which the size of farms
appears to be the smallest. The following is his description of the
dwellings and mode of life of the metayers of that district. *

" The house, built of good walls with lime and mortar, has always
at least one story, sometimes two, above the ground floor. On the
ground floor are generally the kitchen, a cowhouse for two horned

* From his Sixth Essay, formerly referred to.

64 METAYERS.

cattle, and the storehouse, which takes its name, tinaia, from the
large vats (tint) in which the wine is put to ferment, without any
pressing : it is there also that the metayer locks up his casks, his
oil, and his grain. Almost always there is also a shed supported
against the house, where he can work under cover to mend his tools,
or chop forage for his cattle. On the first and second stories are
two, three, and often four bedrooms. The largest and most airy of
these is generally destined by the metayer, in the months of May
and June, to the bringing up of silkworms. Great chests to contain
clothes and linen, and some wooden chairs, are the chief furniture
of the chambers ; but a newly-married wife always brings with her
a wardrobe of walnut wood. The beds are uncurtained and un-
roofed, but on each of them, besides a good paillasse, filled with the
elastic straw of the maize plant, there are one or two mattresses of
wool, or, among the poorest, of tow, a good blanket, sheets of strong
hempen cloth, and on the best bed of the family a coverlet of silk
padding, which is spread on festival days. The only fireplace is in
the kitchen ; and there also is the great wooden table where the
family dines, and the benches ; the great chest which serves at once
for keeping the bread and other provisions, and for kneading ; a
tolerably complete though cheap assortment of pans, dishes, and
earthenware plates : one or two metal lamps, a steelyard, and at
least two copper pitchers for drawing and holding water. The
linen and the working clothes of the family have all been spun by
the women of the house. The clothes, both of men and of women, are
of the stuff" called mezza lana when thick, mola when thin, and made
of a coarse thread of hemp or tow, filled up with cotton or wool ; it
is dried by the same women by whom it was spun. It woidd hardly
be believed what a quantity of cloth and of mezza lana the peasant
women are able to accumulate by assiduous industry ; how many
sheets there are in the store ; what a number of shirts, jackets,
trowsers, petticoats, and gowns are possessed by every member of
the family. By way of example I add in a note the inventory of
the peasant family best known to me : it is neither one of the richest
nor of the poorest, and lives happily by its industry on half the pro-

METAYERS, 68

duce of less than ten arpents of land.* The young women had SL
marriage portion of fifty crowns, twenty paid down, and the rest by
instalments of two every year. The Tuscan crown is worth six
francs [4s. 10c?.]. The commonest marriage portion of a peasant
girl in the other parts of Tuscany, where the metairies are larger,
is 100 crowns, 600 francs."

Is this poverty, or consistent with poverty ? When a common,
M. de Sismondi even says the common, marriage portion of a
metayer's daughter is 24Z. English money, equivalent to at least 50/.
in Italy and in that rank of life ; when one whose dowry is only
half that amount, has the wardrobe described, which is represented
by Sismondi as a fair average ; the class must be fuUy comparable,
in general condition, to a large proportion even of capitalist farmers
in other countries ; and incomparably above the day labourers of
any country, except a new colony, or the United States. Very little
can be inferred, against such evidence, from a traveller's impression
of the poor quality of their food. Its inexpensive character may
be rather the effect of economy than of necessity. Costly feeding is
not the favourite luxury of a southern people ; their diet in all
classes is principally vegetable, and no peasantry on the Continent
has the superstition of the English labourer respecting white bread.
But the nourishment of the Tuscan peasants, according to Sis-
mondi, " is wholesome and various : its basis is an excellent
wheaten bread, brown, but pure from bran and from all mixture."
In the bad season, they take but two meals a day : at ten in
the morning they eat their poUenta, at the beginning of the night

* Inventory of the trousseau of Jane, daughter of Valente Papini, on her
marriage with Giovacchino Landi, the 29th of April 1835, at Porta Veccbia,
near Pescia :

" 28 shifts, 7 hest dresses (of particular fabrics of silk), 7 dresses of printed
cotton, 2 winter working dresses (mezza lana), 3 summer working dresses and
petticoats {mold), 3 white petticoats, 5 aprons of printed linen, 1 of black silk,

1 of black merinos, 9 coloured working aprons (mola), 4 white, 8 coloured, and
3 silk, handkerchiefs, 2 embroidered veils and one of tulle, 3 towels, 14 pairs
of stockings, 2 hats (one of felt, the other of fine straw) ; 2 cameos set in gold,

2 golden earriuiis, 1 chaplet with two Roman silver crowns, 1 coral necklace

with its cross of gold All the richer married women of the class have,

besides, the veste di seta, the great hohday dress, which they only wear four
or five times in their lives."

66 METAYERS.

their soup, and after it bread with a relish of somo sort (companaticd).
In summer they have three meals, at eight, at one, and in the even-
ing ; but the fire is lighted only once a day, for dinner, which con-
sists of soup, and a dish of salt meat or dried fish, or haricots, or
greens, which are eaten with bread. Salt meat enters in a very
small quantity into this diet, for it is reckoned that forty pounds of
salt pork per head suffice amply for a year's provision ; twice a
week a small piece of it is put into the soup. On Sundays they
have always on the table a dish of fresh meat, but a piece which
weighs only a povmd or a pound and a half suffices for the whole
family, however numerous it may be. It must not be forgotten
that the Tuscan peasants generally produce olive oil for their own
consumption : they use it not only for lamps, but as seasoning to all
the vegetables prepared for the table, which it renders both more
savoury and more nutritive. At breakfast their food is bread, and
sometimes cheese and fruit; at supper, bread and salad. Their
drink is composed of the inferior wine of the country, the vinella
or piquette made by fermenting in water the pressed skins of the
grapes. They always, however, reserve a little of their best wine
for the day when they thrash their corn, and for some festivals
which are kept in families. About fifty bottles of vinella per annum,
and five sacks of wheat (about 1000 pounds of bread) are considered
as the supply necessary for a full grown man."

The remarks of Sismondi on the moral influences of this state of
society are not less worthy of attention. The rights and obligations
of the metayer being fixed by usage, and all taxes and rates being
paid by the proprietor, " the metayer has the advantages of landed
property without the burthen of defending it. It is the landlord to
whom, with the land, belong all its disputes : the tenant lives in peace
with all his neighboiirs ; between him and them there is no motive
for rivality or distrust, he preserves a good understanding with
them, as well as with his landlord, with the tax-collector, and with
the church : he sells little, and buys little ; he touches little money,
but he seldom has any to pay. The gentle and kindly character of
the Tuscans is often spoken of, but without sufficiently remarking
the cause which has contributed most to keep up that gentleness ;

METAYERS. 67

the tenure, by which the entire class of farmers, more than three-
fourths of the population, are kept free from almost every occasion
for quarrel." The fixity of tenure which the metayer, so long as
he fulfils his own obligations, possesses by usage, though not by law,
gives him the local attachments, and almost the strong sense of per-
sonal interest, characteristic of a proprietor. " The metayer lives on
his metairie as on his inheritance, loving it with affection, labour-
ing incessantly to improve it, confiding in the future, and making
sure that his land will be tiUed after him by his children and his
children's children. In fact, the majority of metayers live from
.;eneration to generation on the same farm ; they know it in its
•letails with a minuteness which the feeling of property can alone
;5ive. The plots terrassed up, one above the other, are often not
above four feet wide ; but there is not one of them, the qualities of
which the metayer has not studied. This one is dry, that other is
cold and damp : here the soil is deep, there it is a mere crust which
hardly covers the rock ; wheat thrives best on one, rye on another :
here it would be labour wasted to sow Indian corn, elsewhere the
soil is unfit for beans and lupins, further off flax wiU grow admi-
rably, the edge of this brook will be suited for hemp. In this way
one learns with surprise from the metayer, that in a space of ten
arpents, the soil, the aspect, and the inclination of the ground
present greater variety than a rich farmer is generally able to dis-
tinguish in a farm of five hundred acres. For the latter knows
that he is only a temporary occupant ; and moreover, that he must
conduct his operations by general rules, and neglect details. But
the experienced metayer has had his intelligence so awakened by
interest and affection, as to be the best of observers; and with
the whole future before him, he thinks not of himself alone, but of
his children and grandchildren. Therefore, when he plants an
olive, a tree which lasts for centuries, and excavates at the bottom
of the hollow in which he plants it, a channel to let out the water
by which it would be injured, he studies all the strata of the earth
which he has to dig out."*

* Of the intelligence of this interesting people, M. de Sismondi speaks in the
most favourable terms. Few of them can read ; bat there is often one member of

F 2

68 METAYERS.

§ 4. I do not offer these quotations as evidence of the intrinsic
excellence of the metayer system ; but they surely suffice to prove
that neither " land miserably cultivated" nor a people in " the most
abject poverty" have any necessary connexion with it, and that the
unmeasured vituperation lavished upon the system by English
writers, is grounded on an extremely narrow view of the subject.
I look upon the rural economy of Italy as simply so much additional
evidence in favour of small occupations with permanent tenure. It
is an example of what can be accomplished by those two elements,
even under the disadvantage of the peculiar nature of the metayer
contract, in which the motives to exertion on the part of the
tenant are only half as strong as if he farmed the land on the same
footing of perpetuity at a money -rent, either fixed, or varying ac-
cording to some rule which would leave to the tenant the whole
benefit of his own exertions. The metayer tenure is not one which
we should be anxious to introduce where the exigencies of society
had not naturally given birth to it ; but neither ought we to be
eager to abolish it on a mere ct priori view of its disadvantages. If
the system in Tuscany works as well in practice as it is represented
to do, with every appearance of minute knowledge, by so competent
an authority as Sismondi ; if the mode of living of the people, and
the size of farms, have for ages maintained, and still maintain them-
selves* such as they are said to be by him, it were to be regretted

the family destined for the priesthood, who reads to them on winter evenings. Their
language differs little from the purest Italian. The taste for improvisation in
verse is general. " The peasants of the Vale of Nievole frequent the theatre in
summer on festival days, from nine to eleven at night : their admission costs them
little more than five French sous [2|d.]. Their favourite author is Alfieri j the
whole history of the Atridse is familiar to these people who cannot read, and who
seek from that austere poet a relaxation from their rude labours." Unlike most
rustics, they find pleasure in the beauty of their country. " In the hills of the
vale of Nievole there is in front of every house a threshing-ground, seldom of
more than 25 or 30 square fathoms ; it is often the only level space in the
whole fiirm : it is at the same time a terrace which commands the plains and
the valley, and looks out upon a delightful country. Scnrcely ever have I stood
still to admire it, without the metayer's comirg out to enjoy my admiration,
and point out with his finger the beauties which he thought might have escaped
my notice."

* " We never," «aj s Sismondi, " find a family of metayers proposing to theii*

METAYERS. 69

that a state of rural well-being so much beyond what is realized in
most European countries, should be put to hazard by an attempt
to introduce, under the guise of agricultural improvement, a system
of money rents and capitalist farmers. Even where the metayers
are poor, and the subdivision great, it is not to be assumed as of
course, that the change would be for the better. The enlargement
of farms, and the introduction of what are called agricultural im-
provements, usually diminish the number of labourers employed on
the land ; and unless the growth of capital in trade and manufactures
affords an opening for the displaced population, or unless there are
reclaimable wastes on which they can be located, competition will
so reduce wages, that they will probably be worse off as day-
labourers than they were as metayers.

Mr. Jones very properly objects against the French Economists
of the last century, that in pursuing their favourite object of in-
troducing money-rents, they turned their minds solely to putting
farmers in the place of metayers, instead of transforming the
existing metayers into farmers ; which, as he justly remarks, can
scarcely be effected, unless, to enable the metayers to save and
become owners of stock, the proprietors submit for a considerable
time to a diminution of income, instead of expecting an increase of
it, which has generally been their immediate motive for making the
attempt. If this transformation were effected, and no other change
made in the metayer's condition ; if, preserving all the other rights
which usage ensures to him, he merely got rid of the landlord's
claim to half the produce, paying in lieu of it a moderate fixed
rent ; he would be so far in a better position than at present, as
the whole, instead of only half the fruits of any improvement he
made, would now belong to himself: but even so, the benefit
would not be without alloy ; for a metayer, though not himself a

landlord to divide the metairie, unless the work is really more than they can
do, and they feel assured ot retaining the same enjoyments on a smaller piece
of ground. We never find several sons all marrying, and forming as many new
families : only one marries and undertakes the charge of the household : none
of the others marry unless the first is childless, or unless some one of them has
thp oiler ol a new metairie." iVetc Prinvi^iles of ialUical Economy, book iii.
cb. 5.

70 METAYERS.

capitalist, has a capitalist for his partner, and has the use, in Italy
at least, of a considerable capital, as is proved by the excellence of
the farm buildings : and it is not probable that the landowners
would any longer consent to peril their moveable property on the
hazards of agricultural enterprise, when assured of a fixed money
income without it. Thus would the question stand, even if the
change left undisturbed the metayer's virtual fixity of tenure, and
converted him, in fact, into a peasant proprietor at a quit-rent. But
if we suppose him converted into a mere tenant, displaceable at
the landlord's will, and liable to have his rent raised by competition
to any amount which any unfortunate being in search of subsis-
tence can be found to offer or promise for it ; he would lose all the
features in his condition which preserve it from being deteriorated ;
he would be cast down from his present position of a kind of half
proprietor of the land, and would sink into a cottier tenant.

or COTTIEKS.

§ 1. Bt the general appellation of cottier tenure I shall
designate aU cases without exception in which the laboiirer makes
his contract for land without the intervention of a capitalist
farmer, and in which the conditions of the contract, especially the
amount of rent, are determined not by custom but by competition.
The principal European example of this tenure is Ireland, and it is
from that country that the term cottier is derived.* By far the
greater part of the agricultural population of Ireland might until
very lately have been said to be cottier-tenants ; except so far as
the Ulster tenant-right constituted an exception. There was, in-
deed, a numerous class of labourers who (we may presume through
the refusal either of proprietors or of tenants in possession to
permit any further subdivision) had been unable to obtain even
the smallest patch of land as permanent tenants. But, from the
deficiency of capital, the custom of paying wages in land was so
universal, that even those who worked as casual labourers for the
cottiers or for such larger farmers as were found in the country,
were usually paid not in money, but by permission to cultivate for
the season a piece of ground, which was generally delivered to them

* In its original acceptation, the word " cottier " designated a class of sub-
tenants, who rent a cottage and an acre or two of land from the small farmers.
But the usage of writers has long since stretched the term to include those
small farmers themselves, and generally all peasant farmers whose rents are
jdetcrmiued by competition.

72 COTTIERS.

by the farmer ready manured, and was known by the name of
conacre. For this they agreed to pay a money rent, often of
several pounds an acre, but no money actually passed, the debt
being worked out in labour, at a money valuation.

The produce, on the cottier system, being divided into two
portions, rent, and the remuneration of the labourer ; the one is
evidently determined by the other. The labourer has whatever
the landlord does not take : the condition of the labourer depends
on the amount of rent. But rent, being regulated by competition,
depends upon the relation between the demand for land, and the
supply of it. The demand for land depends on the number of com-
petitors, and the competitors are the whole rural population. The
effect, therefore, of this tenure, is to bring the principle of popula-
tion to act directly on the land, and not, as in England, on capital.
Rent, in this state of things, depends on the proportion between
population and land. As the land is a fixed quantity, while popu-
lation has an unlimited power of increase ; unless something
checks that increase, the competition for land soon forces up rent
to the highest point consistent with keeping the popidation alive.
The effects, therefore, of cottier tenure depend on the extent to
which the capacity of population to increase is controlled, either by
custom, by individual prudence, or by starvation and disease.

It would be an exaggeration to afSrm, that cottier tenancy is
absolutely incompatible with a prosperous condition of the labour-
ing class. If we could suppose it to exist among a people to whom
di high standard of comfort was habitual ; whose requirements were
such, that they would not offer a higher rent for land than would
ieave them an ample subsistence, and whose moderate increase of
Jiumbers left no unemployed population to force up rents by com-
petition, save when the increasing produce of the land from increase
•of skill would enable a higher rent to be paid without inconvenience ;
the cultivating class might be as well remunerated, might have as
large a share of the necessaries and comforts of life, on this system
of tenure as on any other. They would not, however, while their
rents were arbitrary, enjoy any of the peculiar advantages which
metayers on the Tuscan system derive from their connexion witl^

COTTIERS. 73

the land. They would neither have the use of a capital belong-
ing to their landlords, nor would the want of this be made up by
the intense motives to bodily and mental exertion which act upon
the peasant who has a permanent tenure. On the contrary, any
increased value given to the land by the exertions of the tenant,
would have no effect but to raise the rent against himself, either the
next year, or at farthest when his lease expired. The landlords
might have justice or good sense enough not to avail themselves of
the advantage which competition would give them ; and different
landlords would do so in different degrees. But it is never safe to
expect that a class or body of men will act in opposition to their
immediate pecuniary interest ; and even a doubt on the subject
would be almost as fatal as a certainty, for when a person is con-
sidering whether or not to undergo a present exertion or sacrifice
for a comparatively remote future, the scale is turned by a very
small probability that the fruits of the exertion or of the sacrifice
would be taken away from him. The only safeguard against these
uncertainties would be the growth of a custom, insuring a per-
manence of tenure in the same occupant, without liability to any
other increase of rent than might happen to be sanctioned by the
general sentiments of the community. The Ulster tenant-right is
such a custom. The very considerable sums which outgoing
tenants obtain from their successors, for the goodwill of their
farms,* in the first place actually limit the competition for land to
persons who have such sums to offer : while the same fact also
proves that full advantage is not taken by the landlord of even that
more limited competition, since the landlord's rent does not amount
to the whole of what the incoming tenant not only offers but
actually pays. He does so in the full confidence that the rent will

* " It is not uncommon for a tenant without a lease to sell the bare privilege
of occupancy or possession of his farm, without any visible sign of improvement
having been made by him, at from ten to sixteen, up to twenty and even forty
years* purchase of the rent." — {Digest of Evidence taken hy Lord Devon's
Commission, Introductory Chapter.) The compiler adds, " the comparative
tranquillity of that district " (Ulster) " may perhaps be mainly attributable to
this lact."

74 ^ COTTIERS.

not be raised ; and for this he has the guarantee of a custom, not
recognised by law, but deriving its binding force from another
sanction, perfectly well understood in Ireland,* Without one or
other of these supports, a custom limiting the rent of land is not
likely to grow up in any progressive community. If wealth and
population were stationary, rent also woidd generally be stationary,
and after remaining a long time unaltered, would probably come to
be considered unalterable. But all progress in wealth and popula-
tion tends to a rise of rents. Under a metayer system there is an
established mode in which the owner of land is sure of participating
in the increased produce drawn from it. But on the cottier system
he can only do so by a readjustment of the contract, while that
readjustment, in a progressive community, would almost always be
to his advantage. His interest, therefore, is decidedly opposed to
the growth of any custom commuting rent into a fixed demand.

§ 2. Where the amount of rent is not limited, either by law or
custom, a cottier system has the disadvantages of the worst metayer
system, with scarcely any of the advantages by which, in the best
forms of that tenure, they are compensated. It is scarcely possible
that cottier agriculture should be other than miserable. There is
not the same necessity that the condition of the cultivators should
be so. Since by a sufficient restraint on population competition
for land could be kept down, and extreme poverty prevented,
habits of prudence and a high standard of comfort, once established,
would have a fair chance of maintaining themselves : though even
in these favourable circumstances the motives to prudence would
be considerably weaker than in the case of metayers, protected by

* " It is in tlie great majority of cases not a reimbursement for outlay
incurred, or improvements effected on the land, but a mere life insurance or
purchase of immunity from outrage." — {Digest, ut supra.) "The present
tenant-right of Ulster" (the writer judiciously remarks) "is an embryo copy-
hold." "Even there, if the tenant-right be disregarded, and atenant be ejected
without having received the price of his good-will, outrages are generally the
consequence." — (Ch. viii.) "The disorganized state of Tipperary, and the
agrarian combination throughout Ireland, are but a methodized war to obtaia
the Ulster tenant-right."

COTTIERS. 75

custom (like those of Tuscany) from being deprived of their
farms : since a metayer family, thus protected, could not be im-
poverished by any other improvident multiplication than their own,
but a cottier family, however prudent and self-restraining, may
have the rent raised against it by the consequences of the multipli-
cation of other families. Any protection to the cottiers against
this evil could only be derived from a salutary sentiment of duty
or dignity, pervading the class. From this source, however, they
might derive considerable protection. If the habitual standard of
requirement among the class were high, a young man might not
choose to offer a rent which would leave him in a worse condition
than the preceding tenant ; or it might be the general custom, as it
actually is in some countries, not to marry until a farm is vacant.

But it is not where a high standard of comfort has rooted itself
in the habits of the labouring class, that we are ever called upon
to consider the effects of a cottier system. That system is found
only where the habitual requirements of the rural labourers are the
lowest possible ; where as long as they are not actually starving,
they will multiply : and population is only checked by the diseases,
and the shortness of life, consequent on insufficiency of merely
physical necessaries. This was the state of the largest portion of
the Irish peasantry. When a people have sunk into this state, and
still more when they have been in it from time immemorial, the
cottier system is an almost insuperable obstacle to their emerging
from it. When the habits of the people are such that their in-
crease is never checked but by the impossibility of obtaining a bare
support, and when this support can only be obtained from land, all
stipulations and agreements respecting amount of rent are merely
nominal ; the competition for land makes the tenants imdertake to
pay more than it is possible they should pay, and when they have
paid all they, can, more almost always remains due.

"As it may fairly be said of the Irish peasantry," said Mr.
Revans, the Secretary to the Irish Poor Law Enquiry Commission,*

* Evils of the State of Ireland, their Causes and their Remedy. Page 10.
A pamphlet coutaiuing, among other things, an excelleat digest aud selection

76 COTTIERS.

" that every family which has not sufficient land to yield its food
has one or more of its members supported by begging, it will easily
be conceived that every endeavour is made by the peasantry to
obtain small holdings, and that they are not influenced in their
biddings by the fertility of the land, or by their ability to pay the
rent, but solely by the offer which is most likely to gain them
possession. The rents which they promise, they are almost inva-
riably incapable of paying ; and consequently they become indebted
to those under whom they hold, almost as soon as they take pos-
session. They give up, in the shape of rent, the whole produce of
the land with the exception of a sufficiency of potatoes for a sub-
sistence ; but as this is rarely equal to the promised rent, they con-
stantly have against them an increasing balance. In some cases,
the largest quantity of produce which their holdings ever yielded,
or which, under their system of tillage, they could in the most
favourable seasons be made to yield, would not be equal to the rent
bid ; consequently, if the peasant fulfilled his engagement with his
landlord, which he is rarely able to accomplish, he would till the
ground for nothing, and give his landlord a premium for being
allowed to till it. On the sea-coast, fishermen, and in the northern
counties those who have looms, frequently pay more in rent than
the market value of the whole produce of the land they hold. It
might be supposed that they would be better without land under
such circumstances. But fishing might fail during a week or two,
and so might the demand for the produce of the loom, when, did
they not possess the land upon which their food is grown, they
might starve. The full amount of the rent bid, however, is rarely
paid. The peasant remains constantly in debt to his landlord ; his
miserable possessions — the wretched clothing of himself and of his
family, the two or three stools, and the few pieces of crockery,
which his wretched hovel contains, would not, if sold, liquidate the
standing and generally accumulating debt. The peasantry are
mostly a year in arrear, and their excuse for not paying more is

of eviderce from the mass collected by the Commission presided over by Arch-
bishqp Whatoly.

COTTIERS. 77

lestitution. Should the produce of the holding, in any year, be more
•ihan usually abundant, or should the peasant by any accident be-
iome possessed of any property, his comforts cannot be increased ;
he cannot indulge in better food, nor in a greater quantity of it.
His furniture cannot be increased, neither can his wife or children
be better clothed. The acqiiisition must go to the person under
whom he holds. The accidental addition will enable him to reduce
his arrear of rent, and thus to defer ejectment. But this must be
the bound of his expectation."

As an extreme instance of the intensity of competition for land,
and of the monstrous height to which it occasionally forced up the
nominal rent ; we may cite from the evidence taken by Lord
Devon's Commission,* a fact attested by Mr. Hurly, Clerk of the
Crown for Kerry : "I have known a tenant bid for a farm that I
was perfectly well acquainted with, worth 50/. a year : I saw the
competition get up to such an extent, that he was declared the tenant
at 450/."

§ 3. In such a condition, what can a tenant gain by any amount
of industry or prudence, and what lose by any recklessness ? If
the landlord at any time exerted his fuU legal rights, the cottier
would not be able even to live. If by extra exertion he doubled the
produce of his bit of land, or if he prudently abstained from pro-
ducing mouths to eat it up, his only gain would be to have more
left to pay to his landlord ; while, if he had twenty children, they
would still be fed first, and the landlord could only take what
was left. Almost alone amongst mankind the cottier is in this con-
dition, that he can scarcely be either better or worse off by any
act of his own. If he were industrious or prudent, nobody but
his landlord would gain ; if he is lazy or intemperate, it is at
his landlord's expense. A situation more devoid of motives to
either labour or self-command, imagination itself cannot conceive.
The inducements of free human beings are taken away, and those
of a slave not substituted. He has nothing to hope, and nothing to

* JEcidence, p. 851.

78 COTTIERS.

fear, except being dispossessed of his holding, and against this he
protects himself by the ultima ratio of a defensive civil war.
Eockism and Whiteboyism were the determination of a people
who had nothing that could be called theirs but a daily meal of the
lowest description of food, not to submit to being deprived of that
for other people's convenience.

Is it not, then, a bitter satire on the mode in which opinions are
formed on the most important problems of human nature and life,
to find public instructors of the greatest pretension, imputing the
backwardness of Irish industry, and the want of energy of the Irish
people in improving their condition, to a peculiar indolence and
recklessness in the Celtic race ? Of all vulgar modes of escaping
from the consideration of the eifect of social and moral influences
on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the
diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences.
What race would not be indolent and insouciant when things
are so arranged, that they derive no advantage from forethought
or exertion ? If such are the arrangements in the midst of which
they Hve and work, what wonder if the listlessness and indiffe-
rence so engendered are not shaken off the first moment an
opportunity offers when exertion would really be of use? It
is very natural that a pleasure-loving and sensitively organized
people like the Irish, should be less addicted to steady routine
labour than the English, because life has more excitements for
them independent of it ; but they are not less fitted for it than
their Celtic brethren the French, nor less so than the Tuscans,
or the ancient Greeks. An excitable organization is precisely
that in which, by adequate inducements, it is easiest to kindle
a spirit of animated exertion. It speaks nothing against the
capacities of industry in human beings, that they will not exert
themselves without motive. No labourers work harder, in England
or America, than the Irish ; but not under a cottier system.

§ 4. The multitudes who till the soil of India, are in a condi-
tion sufficiently analogous to the cottier system, and at the same
time sufficiently different from it, to render the comparison of the

COTTIERS. 79

f iv^o a source of some instruction. In most parts of India there are,
and perhaps have always been, only two contracting parties, the
landlord and the peasant : the landlord being generally the sove-
reign, except where he has, by a special instrument, conceded his
rights to an individual, who becomes his representative. The pay-
ments, however, of the peasants, or ryots as they are termed, have
seldom if ever been regulated, as in Ireland, by competition.
Though the customs locally obtaining were infinitely various, and
though practically no custom could be maintained against the sove-
reign's will, there was always a rule of some sort common to a
neighbourhood ; the collector did not make his separate bargain
with the peasant, but assessed each according to the rule adopted
for the rest. The idea was thus kept up of a right of property
in the tenant, or at all events, of a right to permanent pos-
session; and the anomaly arose of a fixity of tenure in the
peasant-farmer, co-existing with an arbitrary power of increasing
the rent.

When the Mogul government substituted itself throughout the
greater part of India for the Hindoo riders, it proceeded on a diffe-
rent principle. A minute survey was made of the land, and upon
that survey an assessment was founded, fixing the specific payment
due to the government from each field. If this assessment had
never been exceeded, the ryots would have been in the compara-
tively advantageous position of peasant-proprietors, subject to a
heavy, but a fixed quit-rent. The absence, however, of any real
protection against illegal extortions, rendered this improvement in
their condition rather nominal than real ; and, except during the
occasional accident of a humane and vigorous local administrator,
the exactions had no practical limit but the inability of the ryot to
pay more.

It was to this state of things that the English rulers of India
succeeded ; and they were, at an early period, struck with the im-
portance of putting an end to this arbitrary character of the land
revenue, and imposing a fixed limit to the government demand.
They did not attempt to go back to the Mogul valuation. It has
been in general the very rational practice of the EngUsh Govern-

80 COTTIERS.

ment in India, to pay little regard to what was laid down as the
theory of the native institutions, but to inquire into the rights
which existed and were respected in practice, and to protect and
enlarge those. For a long time, however, it blundered grievously
about matters of , fact, and grossly misunderstood the usages and
rights which it found existing. Its mistakes arose from the ina-
bility of ordinary minds to imagine a state of social relations funda-
mentally different from those with which they are practically fami-
liar. England being accustomed to great estates and great landlords,
the English rulers took it for granted that India must possess the
like ; and looking round for some set of people who might be taken
for the objects of their search, they pitched upon a sort of tax-
gatherers called zemindars. " The zemindar," says the philosophical
•historian of India,* "had some of the attributes which belong
to a landowner ; he collected the rents of a particular district, he
governed the cultivators of that district, lived in comparative splen-
dour, and his son succeeded him when he died. The zemindars,
therefore, it was inferred without delay, were the proprietors of the
soil, the landed nobility and gentry of India. It was not considered
that the zemindars, though they collected the rents, did not keep
them ; but paid them all away, with a small deduction, to the
government. It was not considered that if they governed the ryots,
and in many respects exercised over them despotic power, they did
.;not govern them as tenants of theirs, holding their lands either at
will or by contract under them. The possession of the ryot was
an hereditary possession ; from which it was unlawful for the
zemindar to displace him ; for every farthing which the zemindar
drew from the ryot, he was bound to account ; and it was only by
fraud, if, out of all that he collected, he retained an ana more than
the small proportion which, as pay for the collection, he was per-
mitted to receive."

" There was an opportunity in India," continues the historian,
*' to which the history of the world presents not a parallel. Next
after the sovereign, the immediate cultivators had, by far, the
greatest portion of interest in the soil. For the rights (such as

* Mill's Hiatoiy of British India, book vi. ch. 8.

COTTIERS. 81

they were) of the zemindars, a complete compensation might have
easily been made. The generous resolution was adopted, of sacri-
ficing to the improvement of the country, the proprietary rights of
the sovereign. The motives to improvement which property gives,
and of which the power was so justly appreciated, might have been
bestowed upon those upon whom they would have operated with a
force incomparably greater than that with which they could operate
upon any other class of men : they might have been bestowed upon
those from whom alone, in every country, the principal improve-
ments in agriculture must be derived, the immediate cultivators of
the soil. And a measure worthy to be ranked among the noblest
that ever were taken for the improvement of any country, might
have helped to compensate the people of India for the miseries of
that misgovernment which they had so long endured. But the
legislators were English aristocrats ; and aristocratical prejudices
prevailed."

The measure proved a total failure, as to the main effects which its
well-meaning promoters expected from it. Unaccustomed to estimate
the mode in which the operation of any given institution is modified
even by such variety of circumstances as exists within a single
kingdom, they flattered themselves that they had created, through-
out the Bengal provinces, EngHsh landlords, and it proved that they
had only created Irish ones. The new landed aristocracy dis-
appointed every expectation btiilt upon them. They did nothing
for the improvement of their estates, but everything for their own
ruin. The same pains not being taken, as had been taken in
Ireland, to enable the landlords to defy the consequences of their
improvidence, nearly the whole land of Bengal had to be seques-
trated and sold, for debts or arrears of revenue, and in one genera-
tion most of the ancient zemindars had ceased to exist. Other
famiUes, mostly the descendants of Calcutta money-dealers, or of
native officials who had enriched themselves under the British
government, now occupy their place ; and live as useless drones
on the soil which has been given up to them. Whatever the
government has sacrificed of its pecuniary claims, for the creation
of such a class, has at the best been wasted.

G

82 COTTIERS.

In the parts of India into whicli the British rule has been more
recently introduced, the blunder has been avoided of endowing a
useless body of great landlords with gifts from the public revenue.
In most parts of the Madras and in part of the Bombay Presidency,
the rent is paid directly to the government by the immediate culti-
vator. In the North- Western Provinces, the government makes its
engagement with the village community collectively, determining
the share to be paid by each individual, but holding them jointly
responsible for each other's default. But in the greater part of
India, the immediate cultivators have not obtained a perpetuity of
tenure at a fixed rent. The government manages the land on the
principle on which a good Irish landlord manages his estate : not
putting it up to competition, not asking the cultivators what they
will promise to pay, but determining for itself what they can afford
to pay, and defining its demand accordingly. In many districts a
portion of the cultivators are considered as tenants of the rest,
the government making its demand from those only (often a nume-
rous body) who are looked upon as the successors of the original
settlers or conquerors of the village. Sometimes the rent is fixed
only for one year, sometimes for three or five ; but the uniform
tendency of present poUcy is towards long leases, extending, in the
northern provinces of India, to a term of thirty years. This
arrangement has not existed for a sufficient time to have shown by
experience how far the motives to improvement which the long
lease creates in the minds of the cultivators, fall short of the influ-
ence of a perpetual settlement. But the two plans, of annual set-
tlements and of short leases, are irrevocably condemned. They
can only be said to have succeeded, in comparison with the unlimited
oppression which existed before. They are approved by nobody,
and were never looked upon in any other light than as temporary
arrangements, to be abandoned when a more complete knowledge
of the capabilities of the country should afford data for something
more permanent.

MEANS OF ABOLISHING COTTIER TENANCY.

§ 1. When the first edition of the Principles of Political Eco-
lomy was written and published, the question, what is to be done
with a cottier population, was to the English Government the most
urgent of practical questions. The majority of a population of eight
millions, having long grovelled in helpless inertness and abject
poverty under the cottier system, reduced by its operation to mere
food of the cheapest description, and to an incapacity of either doing
or willing anything for the improvement of their lot, had at last, by
the failure of that lowest quality of food, been plunged into a state
in which the alternative seemed to be either death, or to be per-
manently supported by other people, or a radical change in the
economical arrangements under which it had hitherto been their
misfortune to live. Such an emergency had compelled attention
to the subject firom the legislature and from the nation, but it
could hardly be said, with much result ; for, the evil having ori-
ginated in a system of land tenancy which withdrew from the
people every motive to industry or thrift except the fear of star-
vation, the remedy provided by Parliament was to take away
even that, by conferring on them a legal claim to eleemosynary
support : while, towards correcting the cause of the mischiet,
nothing was done, beyond vain complaints, though at the price to
the national treasury of ten millions sterling for the delay.

" It is needless," (I observed) " to expend any argument in
proving that the very foundation of the economical evils of Ireland
is the cottier system ; that while peasant rents fixed by competition
are the practice of the country, to expect industry, useful activity,
any restraint on population but death, or any the smallest diminu-

G 2

84 MEANS OF ABOLISHING COTTIEK TENANCY.

tion of poA'erty, is to look for figs on thistles and grapes on thorns.
If our practical statesmen are not ripe for the recognition of this
fact ; or if, while they acknowledge it in theory, they have not a
sufficient feeling of its reality, to be capable of founding upon it any
course of conduct ; there is still another, and a purely physical con-
sideration, from which they will find it impossible to escape. If the
one crop on which the people have hitherto supported themselves
continues to be precarious, either some new and great impulse
must be given to agricultural skill and industry, or the soil of
Ireland can no longer feed anything like its present population.
The whole produce of the western half of the island, leaving
nothing for rent, will not now keep permanently in existence the
whole of its people : and they will necessarily remain an annual
charge on the taxation of the Empire, until they are reduced either
by emigration or by starvation to a number corresponding with the
low state of their industry, or unless the means are found of making
that industry much more productive."

Since these words were written, events unforeseen by any one
have saved the English rulers of Ireland from the embarrassments
which would have been the just penalty of their indifference and
want of foresight. Ireland, under cottier agriculture, could no
longer supply food to its population : Parliament, by way of remedy,
applied a stimulus to population, but none at all to production ;
the help, however, which had not been provided for the people of
Ireland by political wisdom, came from an unexpected source.
Self-supporting emigration — the Wakefield system, brought into
effect on the voluntary principle and on a gigantic scale (the expenses
of those who followed being paid from the earnings of those who
went before) has, for the present, reduced the population down to
the number for which the existing agricultural system can find em-
ployment and support. The census of 1851, compared with that
of 1841, showed in round numbers a diminution of population of a
million and a half. The subsequent census (of 1861) shows a
further diminution of about half a million. The Irish having thus
found the way to that flourishing continent which for generations
will be capable of supporting in undiminished comfort the increase

MEANS OP ABOLISHING COTTIER TENANCY. 85

of the population of the whole world ; the peasantry of Ireland
having learnt to fix their eyes on a terrestrial paradise beyond the
ocean, as a sure refuge both from the oppression of the Saxon and
from the tyranny of nature ; there can be little doubt that how-
ever much the employment for agricultural labour may hereafter be
diminished by the general introduction throughout Ireland of
English farming — or even if, like the county of Sutherland, all Ire-
land should be turned into a grazing farm — the superseded people
would migrate to America with the same rapidity, and as free of
cost to the nation, as the million of Irish who went thither during
the three years previous to 1851. Those who think that the land
of a country exists for the sake of a few thousand landowners, and
that as long as rents are paid, society and government have ful-
filled their functions, may see in this consummation a happy end
to Irish difficulties.

But this is not a time, nor is the human mind now in a condition,
in which such insolent pretensions can be maintained. The land
of Ireland, the land of every country, belongs to the people of that
country. The individuals called landowners have no right, in
morality and justice, to anything but the rent, or compensation
for its saleable value. With regard to the land itself, the para-
mount consideration is, by what mode of appropriation and of
cultivation it can be made most useful to the collective body of its
inhabitants. To the owners of the rent it may be very convenient
that the bulk of the inhabitants, despairing of justice in the country
where they and their ancestors have lived and suffered, should
seek on another continent that property in land which is denied to
them at home. But the legislature of the empire ought to regard
with other eyes the forced expatriation of millions of people.
When the inhabitants of a country quit the country en masse
because its Government will not make it a place fit for them to
live in, the Government is judged and condemned. There is no
necessity for depriving the landlords of one farthing of the pecu-
niary value of their legal rights ; but justice requires that the actual
cultivators should be enabled to become in Ireland what they will
become in America — -proprietors of the soil which they cultivate.

86 MEANS OP ABOLISHING COTTIER TENANCY.

Good policy requires it no less. Those who, knowing neither
Ireland nor any foreign country, take as their sole standard of social
and economical excellence English practice, propose as the single
remedy for Irish wretchedness, the transformation of the cottiers
into hired labourers. But this is rather a scheme for the improve-
ment of Irish agricultizre, than of the condition of the Irish people.
The status of a day-labourer has no charm for infusing forethought,
frugality, or self-restraint, into a people devoid of them. If the
Irish peasantry could be universally changed into receivers of wages,
the old habits and mental characteristics of the people remaining,
we should merely see four or five millions of people living as day-
labourers in the same wretched manner in which as cottiers they
lived before ; equally passive in the absence of every comfort,
equally reckless in multiplication, and even, perhaps, equally listless
at their work ; since they could not be dismissed in a body, and if
they could, dismissal would now be simply remanding them to the
poor-rate. Far other would be the effect of making them peasant
proprietors. A people who in industry and providence have
everything to learn — ^who are confessedly among the most backward
of European populations in the industrial virtues — require for their
regeneration the most powerful incitements by which those virtues
can be stimulated : and there is no stimulus as yet comparable to
property in land. A permanent interest in the soil to those who
till it, is almost a guarantee for the most unwearied laboriousness :
against over-population, though not infallible, it is the best preser-
vative yet known, and where it failed, any other plan would pro-
bably fail much more egregiously ; the evil would be beyond the
reach of merely economic remedies.

The case of Ireland is similar in its requirements to that of
India. In India, though great errors have from time to time been
committed, no one ever proposed, under the name of agricultural im-
provement, to eject the ryots or peasant farmers from their posses-
sion ; the improvement that has been looked for, has been through
making their tenure more secure to them, and the sole difference of
opinion is between those who contend for perpetuity, and those who
think that long leases will suffice. The same question exists as to

MEANS OF ABOLISHING COTTIER TENANCY. 87

Ireland : and it would be idle to deny that long leases, under such
landlords as are sometimes to be found, do eiFect wonders, even in Ire-
land. But then they must be leases at a moderate rent. Long leases
are in no way to be relied on for getting rid of cottierism. During
the existence of cottier tenancy, leases have always been long ;
twenty-one years and three lives concurrent, was a usual term.
But the rent being fixed by competition, at a higher amount than
could be paid, so that the tenant neither had, nor could by any
exertion acquire, a beneficial interest in the land, the advantage of
a lease was merely nominal. In India, the government, where it
has not imprudently made over its proprietary rights to the zemin-
dars, is able to prevent this evil, because, being itself the landlord,
it can fix the rent according to its own judgment ; but under
individual landlords, while rents are fixed by competition, and the
competitors are a peasantry struggling for subsistence, nominal rents
are inevitable, unless the population is so thin, that the competi-
tion itself is only nominal. The majority of landlords will grasp at
immediate money and immediate power ; and so long as they find
cottiers eager to offer them everything, it is useless to rely on them
for tempering the vicious practice by a considerate self-denial.

A perpetuity is a stronger stimulus to improvement than a long
lease : not only because the longest lease, before coming to an end,
passes through all the varieties of short leases down to no lease at
all ; but for more fundamental reasons. It is very shallow, even
in pure economics, to take no account of the influence of imagina-
tion : there is a virtue in " for ever" beyond the longest term of
years ; even if the term is long enough to include children, and all
whom a person individually cares for, yet until he has reached that
high degree of mental cultivation at which the public good (which
also includes perpetuity) acquires a paramount ascendancy over his
feelings and desires, he will not exert himself with the same ardour
to increase the value of an estate, his interest in which diminishes
in value every year. Besides, while perpetual tenure is the general
rule of landed property, as it is in all the countries of Europe, a
tenure for a limited period, however long, is sure to be regarded as
something of inferior consideration and dignity, and inspires less of

88 MEANS OP ABOLISHING COTTIER TENANCY.

ardour to obtain it, and of attachment to it when obtained. But
where a country is under cottier tenure, the question of perpetuity
is quite secondary to the more important point, a limitation of the
rent. Rent paid by a capitalist who farms for profit, and not for
bread, may safely be abandoned to competition ; rent paid by
labourers cannot, unless the labourers were in a state of civilization
and improvement which labourers have nowhere yet reached, and
cannot easily reach under such a tenure. Peasant rents ought
never to be arbitrary, never at the discretion of the landlord : either
by custom or law, it is imperatively necessary that they should be
fixed ; and where no mutually advantageous custom, such as the
metayer system of Tuscany, has established itself, reason and ex-
perience recommend that they should be fixed by authority : thus
changing the rent into a quit-rent, and the farmer into a peasant
proprietor.

For carrying this change into effect on a sufficiently large scale
to accomplish the complete abolition of cottier tenancy, the mode
which most obviously suggests itself is the direct one of doing the
thing outright by Act of Parliament ; making the whole land of
Ireland the property of the tenants, subject to the rents now really
paid (not the nominal rents), as a fixed rent charge. This, under
the name of " fixity of tenure," was one of the demands of the
iiepeal Association during the most successful period of their agita-
jon ; and was better expressed by Mr. Conner, its earliest, most
■>nthusiastic, and most indefatigable apostle,* by the words, " a
valuation and a perpetuity." In such a measure there would not
have been any injustice, provided the landlords were compensated
for the present value of the chances of increase which they were
prospectively required to forego. The rupture of existing social
relations would hardly have been more violent than that effected
by the ministers Stein and Hardenberg when, by a series of edicts,

* Author of numerous pamphlets, entitled "True Political Economy of
Ireland," " Letter to the Earl of Devon," " Two Letters on the Rackrent
Oppression of Ireland," and others. Mr. Conner has been an agitator on the
subject since 1832.

MEANS OP ABOLISHING COTTIER TENANCY. 89

in the early part of the present century, they revolutionized the
state of landed property in the Prussian monarchy, and left their
names to posterity among the greatest benefactors of their country.
To enlightened foreigners writing on Ireland, Von Raumer and
Gustave de Beaumont, a remedy of this sort seemed so exactly and
obviously what the disease required, that they had some difficulty
in comprehending how it was that the thing was not yet done.

This, however, would have been, in the first place, a complete
expropriation of the higher classes of Ireland : which, if there is
any truth in the principles we have laid down, would be perfectly
■warrantable, but only if it were the sole means of effecting a great
public good. In the second place, that there should be none but
peasant proprietors, is in itself far from desirable. Large farms,
cultivated by large capital, and owned by persons of the best edu-
cation which the country can give, persons qualified by instruction
to appreciate scientific discoveries, and able to bear the delay and
risk of costly experiments, are an important part of a good agricul-
tural system. Many such landlords there are even in Ireland ; and
it would be a public misfortune to drive them from their posts. A
large proportion also of the present holdings are probably still too
small to try the proprietary system imder the greatest advantages ;
nor are the tenants always the persons one would desire to select as
the first occupants of peasant-properties. There are numbers of
them on whom it would have a more beneficial effect to give them
the hope of acquiring a landed property by industry and frugaUty,
than the property itself in immediate possession.

There are, however, much milder measures, not open to similar
objections, and which, if pushed to the utmost extent of which they
are susceptible, would realize in no inconsiderable degree the object
sought. One of them would be, to enact that whoever reclaims
waste land becomes the owner of it, at a fixed quit-rent equal to a
moderate interest on its mere value as waste. It would of course
be a necessary part of this measure, to make compulsory on land-
lords the surrender of waste lands (not of an ornamental character)
whenever required for reclamation. Another expedient, and one
in which individuals could co-operate, would be to buy as much aa

90 MEANS OF ABOLISHING COTTIER TENANCY.

possible of the land offered for sale, and sell it again in small por-
tions as peasant- properties. A Society for this purpose was at one
time projected (though the attempt to establish it proved unsuc-
cessful) on the principles, so far as applicable, of the Freehold Land
Societies which have been so successfully established in England, not
primarily for agricultural, but for electoral purposes.

This is a mode in which private capital may be employed in re-
novating the social and agricultural economy of Ireland, not only
without sacrifice but with considerable profit to its owners. The
remarkable success of the Waste Land Improvement Society, which
proceeded on a plan far less advantageous to the tenant, is an
instance of what an Irish peasantry can be stimulated to do, by a
suflScient assurance that what they do will be for their own advan-
tage. It is not even indispensable to adopt perpetuity as the rule; long
leases at moderate rents, like those of the Waste Land Society, would
suffice, if a prospect were held out to the farmers of being allowed
to purchase their farms with the capital which they might acquire,
as the Society's tenants were so rapidly acquiring under the in-
fluence of its beneficent system.* When the lands were sold, the

* Tliongh this society, during the years succeeding the f imine, was forced to
wind up its affairs, the memory of what it accomplislied ought to be preserved.
The following is an extract in the Proceedings of Lord Devon's Commission
(page 84), from the report made to the society in 1845, by their intelligent
manager, Colonel Robinson : —

" Two hundred and forty-five tenants, many of whom were a few years sincS
in a state bordering on pauperism, the occupiers of small holdings of fV-om ten to
twenty plantation acres each, have, by their own free labour, with the society's
aid, improved their farms to the value of 4396^.; 605^. having been added
during the last year, being at the rate of 111. 18s. per tenant for the whole term,
and 21. 9s. for the past year ; the benefit of which improvements each tenant
will enjoy during the unexpired term of a thirty-one years' lease.

" These 245 tenants and their families have, by spade industry, reclaimed
and brought into cultivation 1032 plantation acres of land, previously unpro-
ductive mountain waste, upon which they grew last year, crops valued by
competent practical persons at 3896Z., being in the proportion of 151. 18*. each
tenant ; and their live stock, consisting of cattle, horses, sheep, and pigs, now
actually upon the estates, is valued, according to the present prices of the
neighbouring markets, at 4162^., of which 1304/. has been added since February
1844, being at the rate of 161. 19s. for the whole period, and 51. 6s. for the last
year ; during which time their stock has thus increased in value a sum equal to
their present annual rent ; and by the statistical tables and returns referred to

MEANS OF ABOLISHINa COTTIER TENANCY. 9i

funds of the association would be liberated, and it might recom-
mence operations in some other quarter.

§ 2. Thus far I had written in 1856. Since that time the great
crisis of Irish industry has made further progress, and it is necessary
to consider how its present state affects the opinions, on prospects
or on practical measures, expressed in the previous part of this
chapter.

The principal change in the situation consists in the great
diminution, holding out a hope of the entire extinction, of cottier
tenure. The enormous' decrease in the number of small hold-
ings, and increase in those of a medium size, attested by the
statistical returns, sufficiently proves the general fact, and all
testimonies show that the tendency still continues.* It is

in previous reports, it is proved that the tenants, in general, improve their little
farms, and increase their cultivation and crops, in nearly direct proportion to
the number of available working persons of both sexes, of which their families
consist."

There cannot be a stronger testimony to the superior amount of gross, and
even of net produce, raised by small farming under any tolerable system of
landed tenure ; and it is worthy of attention that the industry and zeal were
greatest among the smaller holders; Colonel Robinson noticing, as exceptions
to the remarkable and rapid progress of improvement, some tenants who were
" occupants of larger farms than twenty acres, a class too often deficient in
the enduring industry indispensable for the successful prosecution of mountain
improvements."

* There is, however, a partial counter-current, of which I have not seen any
public notice. " A class of men, not very numerous, but sufficiently so to do
much mischief, have, through the Landed Estates Court, got into possession of
land in Ireland, who, of all classes, are least likely to recognise the duties of a
landlord's position. These are small traders in towns, who by dint of sheer
parsimony, frequently combined with money-lending at usurious rates, have
succeeded, in the course of a long life, in scraping together as much money as
will enable them to buy fifty or a hundred acres of land. These people never
think of turning farmers, but, proud of their position as landlords, proceed to
turn it to the utmost account. An instance of. this kind came under my notice
lately. The tenants on the property were, at the time of the purchase, some
twelve years ago, in a tolerably comfortable state. Within that period their
rent has been raised three several times ; and it is now, as I am informed by the
priest of the district, nearly double its amount at the commencement of the
present proprietor's reign. The result is that the people, who were formerly
in tolerable comfort, are now reduced to poverty : two of them have left the

92 MEANS OF ABOLISHING COTTIER TENANCY.

probable that the repeal of the corn laws, necessitating a change
in the exports of Ireland from the products of tillage to those of
pasturage, would of itself have sufficed to bring about this revolu-
tion in tenure. A grazing farm can only be managed by a
capitalist farmer, or by the landlord. But a change involving so
great a displacement of the population, has been immensely faci-
litated and made more rapid by the vast emigration, as well as by
that greatest boon ever conferred on Ireland by any Government,
the Encumbered Estates Act ; the best provisions of which have
since, through the Landed Estates Court, been permanently incor-
porated into the social system of the country. The greatest part of
the soil of Ireland, there is reason to believe, is now farmed either
by the landlords, or by small capitalist farmers. That these farmers
are improving in circumstances, and accumulating capital, there is

property and squatted near an adjacent turf b<^, where they exist trusting for
support to occasional jobs. If this man is not shot, he will injure himself
through the deterioration of his property, but meantime he has been getting
eight or ten per cent on his purchase-money. This is by no means a rare case.
The scandal which such occurrences cause, casts its reflection on transactions of
a wholly different and perfectly legitimate kind, where the removal of the tenants
is simply an act of mercy for all parties.

" The anxiety of landlords to get rid of cottiers is also to some extent neu-
tralized by the anxiety of middlemen to get them. About one-fourth of the
whole land of Ireland is held under long leases ; the rent received, when the
lease is of long standing, being generally greatly under the real value of the
land. It rarely happens that land thus held is cultivated by the owner of
the lease : instead of this, he sublets it at a rack rent to small men, and lives on
the excess of the rent which he receives over that which he pays. Some of these
leases are always running out ; and as they draw towards their close, the
middleman has no other interest in the land than, at any cjst of permanent
deterioration, to get the utmost out of it during the unexpired period of the
term. For this purpose the small cottier tenants precisely answer his turn.
Middlemen in this position are as anxious to obtain cottiers as tenants, as the
landlords are to be rid of them; and the result is a transfer of this sort of tenant
from one class of estates to the other. The movement is of limited dimensions,
but it does exist, and so far as it exists, neutralizes the general tendency.
Perhaps it may be thought that this system will reproduce itself; that the
same motives which led to the existence of middlemen will perpetuate the
class ; but there is no danger of this. Landowners are now perfectly alive to
the ruinous consequences of this system, however convenient for a time ; and a
clause against sub-letting is now becoming a matter of course in every lease." —
{Private Communication from Fro/essor Cavrnes.)

MEANS OP ABOLISHING COTTIER TENANCY. 9S

considerable evidence, in particular the great increase of deposits in
the banks of which they are the principal customers. So far as
that class is concerned, the chief thing still wanted is security of
tenure, or assurance of compensation for improvements. The means
of supplying these wants are now engaging the attention of the
most competent minds ; Judge Longfield's address, in the autumn
of 1864, and the sensation created by it, are an era in the subject,
and a point has now been reached when we may confidently expect
that within a very few years something effectual will be done.

But what, meanwhile, is the condition of the displaced cottiers,
so far as they have not emigrated ; and of the whole class who
subsist by agricultural labour, without the occupation of any land ?
As yet, their state is one of great poverty, with but slight prospect
of improvement. Money wages, indeed, have risen much above the
wretched level of a generation ago : but the cost of subsistence has
also risen so much above the old potato standard, that the real im-
provement is not equal to the nominal ; and according to the best
information to which I have access, there is little appearance of an
improved standard of living among the class. The population, in
fact, reduced though it be, is still far beyond what the country can
support as a mere grazing district of England. It may not, perhaps,
be strictly true that, if the present number of inhabitants are to be
maintained at home, it c^n only be either on the old vicious system
of cottierism, or as small proprietors growing their own food. The
lands which will remain under tillage would, no doubt, if suflScient
security for outlay were given, admit of a more extensive employ-
ment of labourers by the small capitalist farmers ; and this, in the
opinion of some competent judges, might enable the country to
support the present number of its population in actual existence.
But no one will pretend that this resource is sufficient to maintain
them in any condition in which it is fit that the great body of the
peasantry of a country should exist. Accordingly the emigration,
which for a time had fallen off, has, under the additional stimulus
of bad seasons, revived in aU its strength. It is calculated that
within the year 1864 not less than 100,000 emigrants left the Irish
shores. As far as regards the emigrants themselves and their pos-

94 MEANS OF ABOLISHING COTTIER TENANCY.

terity, or the general interests of the human race, it would be folly
to regret this result. The children of the immigrant Irish receive
the education of Americans, and enter, more rapidly and completely
than would have been possible in the country of their descent, into
the benefits of a higher state of civilization. In twenty or thirty
years they are not mentally distinguishable from other Americans.
The loss, and the disgrace, are England's : and it is the English
people and government whom it chiefly concerns to ask themselves,
how far it will be to their honour and advantage to retain the mere
soil of Ireland, but to lose its inhabitants. With the present feel-
ings of the Irish people, and the direction which their hope of im-
proving their condition seems to be permanently taking, England,
it is probable, has only the choice between the depopulation of
Ireland, and the conversion of a part of the labouring population
into peasant proprietors. The truly insular ignorance of her public
men respecting a form of agricultural economy which predominates
in nearly every other civilized country, makes it only too probable
that she will choose the worse side of the alternative. Yet there
are germs of a tendency to the formation of peasant proprietors on
Irish soil, which require only the aid of a friendly legislator to
foster them ; as is shown in the following extract from a private com-
munication by my eminent and valued friend. Professor Cairnes : —
" On the sale, some eight or ten yearq ago, of the Thomond,
Portarlington, and Kingston estates, in the Encumbered Estates
Court, it was observed that a considerable number of occupying
tenants purchased the fee of their farms. I have not been able to
obtain any information as to what followed that proceeding —
whether the purchasers continued to farm their small properties, or
under the mania of landlordism tried to escape from their former
mode of life. But there are other facts which have a bearing on
this question. In those parts of the country where tenant-right
prevails, the prices given for the goodwill of a farm are enormous.
The following figures, taken from the schedule of an estate in the
neighbourhood of Newry, now passing through the Landed Estates
Court, will give an idea, but a very inadequate one, of the prices
which this mere customary right generally fetches.

MEANS OP ABOLISHING COTTIER TENANCY. 95

" Statement showing tlie prices at which the tenant-right of
certain farms near Newry was sold : —

Acres.

Rent.

Purchase-money
of tenant-right.

Lotl

23

... £74

£33

2

24

77

240

3

13

39

110

4

14

34

85

5

10

33

172

6

5

13

75

7

8

26

130

8

11

33

130

9

2

5

5

110 £334 £980

" The prices here represent on the whole about three years' pur-
chase of the rental : but this, as I have said, gives but an inadequate
idea of that which is frequently, indeed of that which is ordinarily,
paid. The right, being purely customary, will vary in value with
the confidence generally reposed in the good faith of the landlord.
In the present instance, circumstances have come to light in the
course of the proceedings connected with the sale of the estate,
which give reason to believe that the confidence in this case was
not high ; consequently, the rates above given may be taken as
considerably under those which ordinarily prevail. Cases, as I am
informed on the highest authority, have in other parts of the
country come to light, also in the Landed Estates Court, in which
the price given for the tenant-right was equal to that of the whole
fee of the land. It is a remarkable fact that people should be
found to give, say twenty or twenty-five years' purchase, for
land which is stiU subject to a good round rent. Why, it will
be asked, do they not purchase land out and out for the same, or a
slightly larger, sum ? The answer to this question, I believe, is
to be found in the state of our land laws. The cost of transferring
land in small portions is, relatively to the purchase money,* very
considerable, even in the Landed Estates Court ; while the goodwill
of a farm may be transferred without any cost at all. The cheapest
conveyance that could be drawn in that Court, where the utmost
economy, consistent with the present mode of remunerating legal
services, is strictly enforced, would, irrespective of stamp duties,

96 MEANS OF ABOLISHING COTTIER TENANCY.

cost 101. — a very sensible addition to the purchase of a small
peasant estate : a conveyance to transfer a thousand acres might
not cost more, and would probably not cost much more. But in
truth, the mere cost of conveyance represents but the least part of
the obstacles which exist to obtaining land in small portions. A
far more serious impediment is the complicated state of the owner-
ship of land, which renders it frequently impracticable to sub-
divide a property into such portions as would bring the land within
the reach of small bidders. The remedy for this state of things,
however, lies in measures of a more radical sort than I fear it is at
aU probable that any House of Commons we are soon likely to see
would even with patience consider. A registry of titles may succeed
in reducing this complex condition of ownership to its simplest
expression ; but where real complication exists, the difficulty is not
to be got rid of by mere simplicity of form ; and a registry of titles
— while the powers of disposition at present enjoyed by landowners
remain undiminished, while every settler and testator has an almost
unbounded Hcence to multiply interests in land, as pride, the pas-
sion for dictation, or mere whim may suggest — will, in my opinion,
fail to reach the root of the evil. The effect of these circumstances
is to place an immense premium upon large dealings in land —
indeed in most cases practically to preclude all other than large
dealings ; and while this is the state of the law, the experiment of
peasant proprietorship, it is plain, cannot be fairly tried. The facts,
however, which I have stated, show, I think, conclusively, that there
is no obstacle in the disposition of the people to the introduction of
this system,"

SPEECH

ON ME CHICHESTER FOETBSCQE'S

LAND BILL

Mat 17 1866

It was in an auspicious hour for the futurity of Ireland, and of the
Empire of which Ireland is so important a part, that a British Ad-
ministration has introduced this Bill into ParUament. I venture to
express the opinion that nothing which any Government has yet
done, or which any Government has yet attempted to do, for Ire-
land— ^not even Catholic Emancipation itself — has shown so true a
comprehension of Ireland's real needs, or has aimed so straight at
the very heart of Ireland's discontent and of Ireland's misery. It
is a fulfilment of the promise held out by the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer at the beginning of the Session, when, in discharging the
painful duty of calling on Parliament to treat Ireland once more —
let us hope for the last time — as a disaffected dependency, he de-
clared his purpose, and that of the Government of which he is a
Member, to legislate for Ireland according to Irish exigencies, and
no longer according to English routine. To have no better guide
. than routine is not a safe thing in any case ; but to make the rou-
tine of one country our guide in legislating for another, is a mode
of conduct which, unless by a happy accident, cannot lead to good.
It is a mistake which this country has often made — not perhaps so
much from being more liable to it than other countries, as from
having more opportunities of committing it : having been so often
called on to legislate, and to frame systems of administration, for

H

98 SPEECH ON

dependencies very unlike itself. Sir, it is a problem of this sort whicli
we still have before us when we attempt to legislate for Ireland.
Not that Ireland is a dependency — those days are over ; she is an
integral part of a great self-governing nation : but a part, I venture
to say, very unlike the remaining parts. I am not going to talk
about natural differences, race and the like — the importance of
which, I think, is very much exaggerated ; but let any hon. gentle-
man consider what a different history Ireland has had from either
England or Scotland, and ask himself whether that history must
not have left its impress deeply engraven on Irish character. Con-
sider again how different, even at this day, are the social circum-
stances of Ireland from those of England or Scotland ; and whether
such different circumstances must not often require different laws
and institutions. People often ask — it has been asked this evening
— why should that which works weU in England not work well in
Ireland ? or why should anything be needed in Ireland which is
not needed in England ? Are Irishmen an exception to all the rest
of mankind, that they cannot bear the institutions and practices
which reason and experience point out as the best suited to promote
national prosperity ? Sir, we were eloquently reminded the other
night of that double ignorance against which a great philosopher
warned his cotemporaries — ignorance of our being ignorant. But
when we insist on applying the same rules in every respect to Ire-
land and to England, we show anothg- kind of double ignorance,
and at the same time disregard a precept older than Socrates — the
precept which was inscribed on the front of the Temple of Delphi :
we not only do not know those whom we undertake to govern, but
we do not know ourselves. No, Sir, Ireland is not an exceptional
country ; but England is. Irish circumstances and Irish ideas
as to social and agricultural economy are the general ideas and
circumstances of the human race ; it is English circumstances
and English ideas that are peculiar. Ireland is in the main stream
of human existence and human feeling and opinion ; it is England
that is in one of the lateral channels. If any hon. gentleman
doubts this, I ask, is there any other country on the face of the
earth in which, not merely as an occasional fact, but as a general

MR CHICHESTER FORTESCUE'S LAND BILL. 99

rule, the land is owned in great estates by one class, and farmed by
another class of capitalist farmers at money rents fixed by contract,
while the actual cultivators of the soil are hired labourers, wholly
detached from the soil, and receiving only day wages ? Parts of
other countries may be pointed out where something like this
state of things exists as an exceptional fact, but Great Britain is the
only country where it is the general rule. In all other places in
which the cultivators have emerged from slavery, and from that
modified form of slavery, serfage, and have not risen into the
higher position of owning land in their own right, the labourer
holds it, as in Ireland, directly from the landowner, and the inter-
mediate class of well-to-do tenant-farmers has, as a general rule,
no existence, Ireland is like the rest of the world, and England is
the exceptional country. Then, if we are making rulcs for the
common case, is it reasonable to draw our precedents from the ex-
ceptional one ? If we are to be guided by experience in legislating
for Ireland, it is Continental rather than English experience that we
ought to consider, for it is on the Continent, and not in England,
that we find anything like similarity of circumstances. And this
explains why so much has been said in Ireland about tenant-right
and fixity of tenure. For what does Continental experience teU
us, as a matter of historical fact ? It tells us that where this
agricultural economy, in which the actual cidtivator holds the land
directly from the proprietor, has been found consistent with the
good cultivation of the land or with the comfort and prosperity
of the cultivators, the rent has not been determined, as it is in
Ireland, merely by contract, but the occupier has had the protec-
tion of some sort of fixed usage. The custom of the country
has determined more or less precisely the rent which he should
pay, and guaranteed the permanence of his tenure as long as he
paid it. Such a social and agricultural system as exists in Ireland
has never, or next to never, succeeded without tenant-right
and fixity of tenure. Do I therefore ask you to establish cus-
tomary rents and fixity of tenure as the rvde of occupancy in
Ireland ? Certainly not. It is perhaps a sufficient reason that
I know you will not do it ; but I am also aware that what may

h2

100 SPEECH ON

be very wholesome when it grows up as a custom, approved
and accepted by all parties, would not necessarily have the same
success if, without having ever existed as a custom, it were to
be enforced as a law. Only I warn you of this. Peasant farming,
as a rule, never answers without fixity of tenure. If Ireland is
ever to prosper with peasant farming, fixity of tenure is an indis-
pensable condition. But you do not want to perpetuate peasant
farming ; you want to improve Ireland in another way. You pre-
fer the English agricultural economy, and desire to establish that.
The only mode of cultivation which seems to you beneficial is cul-
tivation by well-to-do tenant-farmers and hired labourers. Well,
Sir, there is a good deal to be said against this doctrine — ^it is very
disputable, but I am not going to dispute it now. I accept this as
the thing you have got to do, and assuming it to be desirable, I
ask, how is it to be brought about 1 This is not the first time that
a problem of this sort has been propounded. The French Econo-
mists of the 18th century — on the whole the most enlightened
thinkers of their time — tried to deal with a state of things not un-
like what you have to deal with ; and they wanted exactly what
you want. They had a wretched, down-trodden, half-starved race
of peasant cultivators, and they wanted to have, instead of these,
comfortable farmers. Some of the more enlightened of the great
landlords of France adopted the doctrines of the Economists, and
would gladly have carried them into practice ; but nothing came of
it, and the reform of the agricultural economy of France had to
wait for a revolution. Now, to what do the best writers attribute
the failure of these agricultural reformers ? To this — that they
aimed at putting farmers in the place of the peasants, when they
should have aimed at raising the peasants into farmers. If you are
going to succeed where they failed, it can only be by avoiding their
error. Instead of bringing in capitalist farmers over the heads of
the tenants, you have got to take the best of the present tenants,
and elevate them into the comfortable farmers you want to have.
You cannot evict a whole nation — the country would be too hot to
hold you and your new tenants if you attempted it. And suppos-
ing even that things could be made smooth for the successors of

MR CHICHESTER FOKTESCUE'S LAND BILL. 101

the existing peasantry by means of emigration, are you going to ex-
patriate a whole people ? Would any hon. gentleman desire to do
that ? Would he endure the thought of doing it ? Supposing even
that you sought to use the right of landed property for such a pur-
pose, is there any human institution which could have such a strain
put upon it and not snap ? Well, then, how are the present te-
nantry, or the best of them, to be raised into a superior class of far-
mers ? There is but one w^ay, and this Bill which is before you
affords the means. Give them what you can of the encouraging
influences of ownership. Give them an interest in improvement.
Enable them to be secure of enjoying the fruits of their own labour
and outlay. Let their improvements be for their own benefit, and
not solely for those whose land they till. There is no parallel pro-
blem to be resolved on this side of St. George's Channel. The sys-
tem of tenancy in England is found to be at least not incompatible
with agricultural improvement. In England and Scotland a large
proportion of the landowners either give leases to their tenants
which afford them sufficient time for reaping the benefit of what-
ever improvements they may make, or, when there are no leases,
there is generally such a degree of confidence and mutual under-
standing between landlord and tenant, that they make their im-
provements in concert ; or at all events the tenant, as a general
rule, has no fear that the landlord will take an unfair advantage of
him, and, by accepting a higher offer over his head, will possess
himself without compensation of the increased value which the
tenant has given to the land. This is the case in England : but
how is it in Ireland ? The reverse in all respects. There are few
leases, except old and expiring ones, and no confidence at all be-
tween landlords and tenants. One-half of the landlords, or
some other proportion of them, do not deserve confidence, and
the consequence is that the tenants dare not trust the other
half. If a tenant does trust his landlord, he does not trust,
for he does not know, the next heir, or the stranger who
may buy the property in the Landed Estates Court. The extent
to which this want of confidence reaches is really one of the most
remarkable facts in all history. There have been incontestable

LIBRARY

UNIVERSTTy qF CALIFORNIA

SANTA BARBARA

tO% SPEECH ON

proofs of late years that the tenant farmers of Ireland often possess
a considerable amount of savings. Where do these savings go to ?
They go into banks of deposit ; they go into the English funds ;
they go under the thatch ; everywhere but to their natural invest-
ment, the farm. There is something, to my mind, almost tragical
in this state of things. For the fact is decidedly honourable to Irish
landlords that these savings have been made by their tenants ; it
exculpates a large proportion of them from the indiscriminate
charges often brought against the entire class ; it proves that a
much greater number of them than has often been supposed are
neither greedy nor grasping, do not rack-rent their tenants, or
take the last farthing in payment of rent ; and in spite of this, the
tenants are so absolutely without confidence in them, that even the
sums which the landlord's forbearance has enabled them to accu-
mulate are sent away everywhere — are employed for any purpose
—except the most obvious and natural purpose, the improvement
of their farms. Now, are you going to let this state of things con-
tinue ? If we all deplore it — if we all are ashamed of it — what re-
medy is there but one ? Give the tenant compensation, awarded
by an impartial tribunal, for whatever increased value — and only
for the increased value — he has given to the land. Do not use the
fruits of his labour or of his outlay without paying for them, or
without giving him assurance of being paid for them. The Bill
appoints an impartial tribunal. When the parties do not agree,
the case is to be adjudged by authorities who even in Ireland de-
serve and possess the confidence alike of landlords and tenants.
Valuers appointed by the Government Board of Works will decide
in the first instance, and the assistant barrister, the stipendiary
Chairman of Quarter Sessions, is the Judge in appeal. I believe
no one doubts that such arbitrators as these would be impartial,
and would be trusted by the Irish people. But the right hon.
gentleman who spoke last (Mr. Lowe) said it was not so much the
giving compensation he objected to, as to the fact that im-
provements might be made under the Bill, to which the consent
of the landlord had not been previously obtained. That pro-
vision, however, if we consider the matter, is the very essence of

MR CHICHESTER FORTESCUE'S LAND BILL. 103

the Bill, and is indispensable to its operation. If improvements
are only to be made by the landlord's permission, and on his
voluntary promise of an indemnity, that can be done now ;
saving, indeed, some insufficiency in the legal power of a limited
owner to bind his successors. But experience proves that when
there is a want of contidence between landlords and tenants,
improvements which require the previous consent of the landlord are
not made at all. The tenant is afraid to serve a notice on his land-
lord. He is afraid to announce beforehand to the landlord that he
is in a condition to make improvements, lest, being mostly a tenant-
at-will, he should be thought to be also in a condition to pay a
higher rent. Or he fears that the landlord will do what some
landlords have been known to do — withhold his assent, on the
speculation that the tenant may make the improvement not-
withstanding, and the landlord may be able to profit by it without
paying any indemnity. Or he thinks that the landlord may dis-
like an improving tenant, from a mere wish to keep his tenantry in
a state of dependence. And what does the landlord sacrifice by
renouncing the condition of previous consent ? Nothing whatever
but the power of taking for himself the fruits of the labour of
others. He will still be free to improve the estate himself, if he
can and will. But if he does not, and his tenant does, he will be
prevented from appropriating the value which the tenant has
created, without paying him an equivalent. What he will have to
pay, will be determined not by the outlay of the tenant, but by
value actually added to the farm by the tenant's labour or outlay,
in the opinion of an impartial tribunal. It is of no consequence
how much the tenant may have expended ; unless he has made the
land worth more money to the landlord for the landlord's uses, he
will receive nothing. Even in such a case as that to which the
right hon. gentleman alluded, and to which reference was frequently
made before the Committee — the case of a landlord wishing to
consolidate his farms, and the buildings erected by the tenant not
being required when such consolidation takes place — this circum-
stance would be taken into consideration by the valuer, and the
tenant would have to bear the loss. Indeed, in no case would the

104 SPEECH ON

landlord sustain any pecuniary loss. He would simply have to
pay for value received. The objection is what would be called,
on almost any subject but the present, a purely abstract objection.
The Bill is thought to violate a certain abstract right of property
in land. I call it an abstract right, meaning that it is of no
value to the possessor though it is hurtful to other people. Of
what earthly use to any landed proprietor is the right of pre-
venting improvement ? It is the right of the dog in the
manger. Yet, wonderful to relate, even this the Bill does not
take away ; it leaves to the landlord the power of preventing
the tenant's improvements by a previous stipulation. But it does
this in the confidence — I believe the well-grounded confidence —
that the power will seldom be used, except when there is something
to justify it in the special circumstances of the case. The framers
of the Bill place a just reliance in the influence of a sound moral
principle when once embodied in the law. They know that there
is a great difference between requiring the tenant to ask permission
from the landlord to make improvements, and throwing the onus
on the landlord of prohibiting by anticipation a public benefit,
which the law, if this Bill passes, will have declared its purpose of
encouraging. I maintain. Sir, that the claim of the improver to
the value of his improvements, so far from conflicting with the right
of property in land, is a right of the very same description as landed
property, and rests on the same foundation. What is the ground
and justification of landed property ? I am afraid some hon.
Members think that I am going to give utterance to some grave
heresy on this subject. At least, those hon. gentlemen who have
been so obliging as to advertise my writings on an unexampled
scale, and entirely free of expense either to myself or the publisher,
seemed to be much scandalized by some passages they had dis-
covered, to the effect that landed property must be more limited in
its nature than other proprietary rights, because no man made
the land. Well, Sir, did any man make the land ? If not, did
any man acquire it by gift, or by bequest, or by inheritance, or by
purchase, from the maker of it ? These, I apprehend, are the
foundations of the right to other property. Then what is the

MR CHICHESTER FORTESCUE'S LAND BILL. 105

foundation of the right to property in land ? The answer com-
monly made to this question is enough for me, and I agree in it.
Though no man made the land, men, by their industry, made the
valuable qualities of it; they reclaimed it from the waste, they brought
it under cultivation, they made it useful to man, and so acquired
as just a title to it as men have to what they have themselves
made. Very well : I have nothing to say against this. But why,
I ask, is this right, which is acquired by improving the land, to be
for ever confined to the person who first improved it ? If it
requires improving again, and some one does improve it again, does
not this new improver acquire a kind of right akin to that of the
original improver ? Of course I do not pretend that when one
person has acquired a right to land by improving it, another, by
improving it again, can oust the first man of his right. But
neither do I admit that the man who has once improved a piece of
land, acquires thereby an indefeasible right to prevent any one else
from improving it for the whole remainder of eternity ; or a right
to profit, without cost to himself, by improvements which some one
else has made. Landed property in its origin had nothing to rest
upon but the moral claim of the improver to the value of his im-
provement ; and unless we recognise on the same ground a kindred
claim in the temporary occupier, we give up the moral basis on
which landed property rests, and leave it without any justification
but that of actual possession — a title which can be pleaded for every
possible abuse. We have heard a good deal lately about " thoughtful
Reformers." It seems there are a great many thoughtful Re-
formers in this House — some of them very thoughtful ones indeed.
I wish there were as many thoughtful Conservatives ; but I am
afraid they keep most of their thoughtfulness for Reform. How-
ever, we know there are thoughtful Conservatives, and they cannot
be all on this side of the House. Let me remind them of a writer
with whose works they must all of them be familiar — the most
tlioughtful mind that ever tried to give a philosophic basis to English
Conservatism — the late Mr. Coleridge. In his second Lay Sermon,
this eminent Conservative propounds a theory of property in land,
compared with which anything which I ever hinted at is the merest

106 SPEECH ON

milk and water. His idea of landed property is, that it is a kind
of public function — a trust rather than a property — which the
owner is morally justified in using for his own advantage, only after
certain great social ends, connected with the cultivation of the country
and the well-being of its inhabitants, have been amply fulfilled. I
am not claiming anything comparable to this. All I ask is, that
the improvement of the country and the well-being of the people
may be attended to, when they are proved not to be inconsistent
with the pecuniary interest of the landowners. This modest de-
mand is the only one I make ; because I believe, and because
it is believed by those who are better judges of the condition
of Ireland than I can pretend to be, that no more than this
is necessary to cure the existing evils. Sir, the House has now a
golden opportunity. "WTien I think how small a thing it is which
is now asked of us, and when I hear, as I have heard. Members of
this House, usually classed as of extreme opinions — men who are
Irish of the Irish, who have the full confidence of what is called the
National party — when such men assure us that the tenantry, who
have been scarcely touched by any of the things you have hitherto
done for the benefit of Ireland, will, as they hope, and as they think
there is ground to believe, be reconciled to their lot, and changed
from a discontented, if not disloyal, to a hopeful and satisfied part of
the nation, by so moderate — I had almost said so minute — a con-
cession as that which is now proposed ; I confess I am amazed that
those who have sufiTered so long and so bitterly are able to be con-
ciliated or calmed by so small a gift ; and deplorable would it
indeed be if so small a gift were refused to them. Even if we
ourselves had not full confidence in this remedy, there is nothing in
it so alarming that we need be afraid to try, as an experiment,
what is so ardently wished for by a country to which we owe
so much reparation that she ought to be the spoilt child of this
country for a generation to come — to be treated not only with jus-
tice but with generous indulgence. I am speaking in the presence
of many who listened, like myself, to. that touching speech which
•was delivered on the last night of the Reform debate, by the hon.
Member for Tralee (The O'Donoghue) — when he, who is so well

MR CHICHESTER FORTESCUE^S LAND BILL. 107

entitled to speak in the name of the Irish people, and of that portion
of them of whom we have had the hardest thoughts, and who have
had the hardest thoughts of us, held out his hand to us and declared
that if there is even one party in this House and in this country who
reciprocate the feeling he then showed, and really regard the Irish
as fellow- countrymen, they will be fellow-countrymen to us — they
will labour and contend by our side, have the same objects with us,
look forward to the same and not to a different future, and let the
dream of a separate nationality remain a dream. Many, I am sure,
must have felt as I felt while I listened to his eloquent and feeling
words, that if this House only wills it, that speech is the beginning
of a new era. Let us not fling away in want of thought — for it is
not want of heart — the reconciliation so frankly tendered. His-
tory will not say that we of the present generation are unwilling to
govern Ireland as she ought to be governed: — let us not go down to
posterity with the contemptible reputation of being unable to do so.
Let it not be said of us that, with the best possible intentions towards
Ireland, no length of time or abundance of experience could teach
us to understand her — whether it is insular narrowness, making us
incapable of imagining that Ireland's exigencies could be in any way
different from England's ; or because the religious respect we
cherish for everything which has the smallest savour of a right of
property, has degenerated, as is sometimes the case with other
religions, into a superstition. Let us show that our principles of
government are not a mere generalization from English facts ; but
that in legislating for Ireland we can take into account Irish cir-
cumstances : and that our care for landed property is an intelligent
regard for its essentials, and for the ends it ftilfils, and not a servile
prostration before its mere name.

SPEECH

ON ME MAGUIEE'S MOTION

ON THE STATE OF lEELAND

MxBOR 12 1868

It was with a feeling, I will not say of disappointment — because
there can be no disappointment where there has not previously been
hope — but of regret, that I witnessed the " beggarly account of
empty boxes" which the Government has laid before us, instead of
an Irish policy. My dissatisfaction was not so much with what
they did, or what they refused to do, on the subject of the land —
although I look upon that question as outweighing all the rest put
together, and I believe that without a satisfactory dealing with it,
nothing can be done which will be at all effectual. I am afraid the
time is far distant when it would be fair to expect that a Govern-
ment, and especially a Conservative Government, should be found
in advance of public opinion — which I cannot deny that the present
Government would be, if they were to propose such a measure on
the Irish Land question as I conceive would alone be effectual to
settle it. But what we have a right to expect even from a Con-
servative Government, at all events from a Conservative Government
which professes a Liberal policy — even with the qualifying adjunct,
" truly Liberal" — is that they shall be on a level with the opinion
of the people : and this they most assuredly are not, on the subject
of the Irish Church. If there ever was a question on which I might
say the whole human race has made up its mind, it is this. I concur
in every word that was said, and every feeling that was expressed,

SPEECH ON THE STATE OF IRELAND. 109

by my right hon. friend the Member for Calne (Mr. Lowe) on this
subject : and I thank him from my heart for his manly and out-
spoken declaration in reference to that great scandal and iniquity,
■which was so well described by the right hon. gentleman now at the
head of the Government (Mr. Disraeli), in a speech which, although
last year he endeavoured to explain away, I am not aware that
he has ever disavowed. It is an institution which could not
be submitted to by any country, except at the point of the
sword. Now, on this subject the Government have not shown
themselves altogether inflexible. The noble Lord the Chief
Secretary for Ireland has expressed his willingness in some
degree to entertain the principle of religious equality, and
I thank him for it ; but, as has been remarked by my hon. friend the
Member for Manchester (Mr. Jacob Bright), he proposed to do it
— if at all — ^by levelling up instead of levelling down. The noble
Lord is willing that every valley should be exalted ; but he does not
go on to the succeeding clause, and say that every mountain and hill
shall be laid low. So long as the national property which is
administered by the Episcopal Church of Ireland is not diverted
from its present purpose, the noble Lord has no objection at all to
this country's saddling itself with the endowment of another great
hierarchy, which, if effected on the principle of religious equality,
would be a great deal more costly than even that which now exists.
Does the noble Lord really think it possible that the people of
England will submit to this ? I may be permitted, as one who,
in common with many of my betters, have been subjected to the
charge of being Utopian, to congratulate the Government on having
joined that goodly company. It is, perhaps, too complimentary
to call them Utopians, they ought rather to be called dys-topians,
or cacotopians. 'V^'^lat is commonly called Utopian is something
too good to be practicable ; but what they appear to favour is too
bad to be practicable. Not only would England and Scotland
never submit to it, but the Eoman Catholic clergy of Ireland refuse
it. They will not take your bribe. As in many other things I
differ from the hon. and learned Member for Oxford (Mr. Neate),
who moved the Amendment, so my opinion on the subject of Irish

110 SPEECH ON MR MAGUIRE'S MOTION

remedies is directly contrary to his. Whereas the hon. and
learned Member thinks that the real obstacle to the peace and
prosperity of Ireland is the proposal of extravagant and impossible
remedies, my opinion, on the contrary, is that the real obstacle is
not the proposal of extravagant and impossible remedies, but the
persistent unwillingness of the House even to look at any remedy
which they have pre-judged to be extravagant and impossible.
When a country has been so long in possession of full power over
another, as this country has over Ireland, and still leaves it in the
state of feeling which now exists in Ireland, there is a strong pre-
sumption that the remedy required must be much stronger and
more drastic than any which has yet been apphed. All the pre-
sumption is in favour of the necessity of some great change. Great
and obstinate evils require great remedies. If the House does not
think so — if it still has faith in small remedies, I exhort it to make
haste and adopt them. It has already lost a great deal of time.
Coimting from 1829, which was the time when this country first
began to govern Ireland, or even to profess to govern Ireland, for the
sake of Ireland, thirty-nine years have elapsed, and during that time,
although there may have been some material progress, as there has
been everywhere else, moral progress, in reconciling Ireland to our
Government, and to the Union with us, has not been made, and
does not seem likely soon to be made, unless we change our policy.
Hon. gentlemen prefer to soothe themselves with statistics, flatter-
ing themselves with the idea that Ireland is improving, and that
the evil was greater at some former time than it is now. My
right hon. friend the Member for Calne has told us that we have
no occasion to care for Fenianism, and that it is not of any conse-
quence. I do not suppose my right hon. friend thinks that the
remedies proposed by me or any one else for the benefit of Ireland
are intended to conciliate the Fenians. I know very little of the
Fenians. I do not pretend to know what their opinions are, nor do
I believe my right hon. friend knows them a bit better. We do
know, however, that they desire what I greatly deprecate — a violent
separation of Ireland from this country ; and they desire this with
such bitterness and animosity that there is no chance of conciliating

ON THE STATE OP IRELAND. Ill

them. But the peculiar and growing danger in the state of Ireland
is this — that there is nearly universal discontent, and very general
disaffection. Hon. gentlemen need not flatter themselves that this
is an evil which can be safely disregarded. Ireland has had rebellions
before. As a rebellion this recent one is nothing — it is contemptible.
A great deal has been said about the circumstance that no person
of consequence, personally or socially, has put himself at the head
of it. It was not likely that any one who had anything to lose
would do so. Is it within the range of possibility that an insurrec-
tion could be successful in Ireland at this particular time ? What does
Mitchel himself say of it ? This is the reason why every one who
has something to lose (and every one who is an occupant of land has
something to lose) will not, until he sees a greater chance of suc-
cess, countenance rebellion, or throw any other difficulty in the way
of suppressing it than by sheltering from the police those who are in-
volved in it. That is not the danger. The danger is one of which there
is the strongest evidence. My own information is derived from many
trustworthy persons, not of extreme opinions, persons whose idea of
remedial measures for Ireland falls far short of mine, but who are
unanimously of opinion that the state of Ireland is more dangerous at
this moment than at any former period, and that the feeling of the
people is one of general discontent and wide disaffection.
Gentlemen who hold land in Ireland do not think so ; but they
would be the last persons to find it out. Persons in possession of
power are usually the last to find out what is thought of them by
their inferiors. They awake from their dream and find it out when
they little expect it. There are two circumstances which make the
disaffection more alarming at this time than at any former period
since the rebellion of 1798. One is a circumstance which has
never existed before. For the first time, the discontent in Ireland
rests on a background of several millions of Irish across the Atlan-
tic. This is a fact which is not likely to diminish. The number
of Irish in America is constantly increasing. Their power to
influence the political conduct of the United States is increasing,
and will daily increase; and is there any probability that the
American-Irish will come to hate this country less than they do at

112 SPEECH ON MR MAGUIRE'S MOTION

the present moment ? The noble Lord the Chief Secretary for
Ireland said truly that many Irish go to our colonies, and that they
remain loyal. But why ? The Irish who go to those colonies find
everything there which they seek in vain here. They have the
land ; they have no sectarian church ; they have even a separate
Legislature. All this they have under the British Crown and the
British flag. If you gave all this to Ireland the people would be
tranquil enough there. They will be so with much less than that ;
but those who go to America, on the contrary, will be loyal only
to the American Government, while their feeling towards England
is, and must be, directly opposite to that of the Irish who go to
Australia and the other English Colonies. That is one most
serious cause of danger in Ireland. Another is that the disaffection
has become, more than at any former period, one of nationality. The
Irish were taught that feeling by Englishmen. England has only
even professed to treat the Irish people as part of the same nation
with ourselves, since 1800. How did we treat them before that
time ? I will not go into the subject of the penal laws, because it
may be said that those laws affected the Irish not as Irish but as
Catholics. I will only mention the manner in which they were
treated merely as Irish. I grant that, for these things, no man now
living has any share of the blame ; we are all ashamed of them ;
but " the evil that men do lives after them." First of all, this
House declared the importation of Irish cattle a public nuisance.
When we refused to receive Irish cattle, the Irish thought they
would slaughter and salt them, to try whether we would receive
them in that shape. But that was not allowed. Then they thought
that if they could not send the cattle or the flesh, they might send
the hides in the form of leather. No ; that was not allowed either.
Being thus denied admission for cattle in any shape, they tried if
they might be allowed to do anything with respect to sheep ; and
they commenced exporting wool to this country. No ; we would
not take their wool. Then they began to manufacture it, and
tried if we would take the manufactured article. This was worst
of all, and we compelled our deliverer, William III., of " pious and
immortal memory," to promise his Parliament that he would put

ON THE STATE OF IRELAND. 11$

down the Irisli woollen manufacture. This was not, I think, a
brotherly course, or at all like treating Ireland as a part of the
same nation. If we had been determined to impress upon Ireland
in the strongest manner that she was regarded as a totally different
and hostile nation, that was exactly the course to pursue. In fact,
Ireland was treated in that thoroughly heathenish manner in
which it was then customary for nations to treat other nations
whom they had conquered — with the feeling that the dependent
nation had no rights which the superior nation was bound to respect.
It is unjust, however, to call that feeling heathenish, since it
belonged only to the worst times of heathenism, before the Stoic
philosophy — before the great, the immortal Marcus Antoninus pro-
claimed the kinship of all mankind. From the year 1800, these
things began to change; but down to 1829 it may be said that
though in some sense we treated Ireland as a sister, it was as
sister Cinderella. Dust and ashes were good enough for her ; pur-
ple and fine linen were reserved for her sisters. From 1829, how-
ever, we ceased to govern* Ireland in that way. From that time
there has been no feeling in this country with respect to Ireland, but
a continuance of the really sisterly feeling which then commenced.
Since that time it has been the sincere desire of all parties in Eng-
land to govern Ireland for her good ; but we have grievously failed
in knowing how to set about it. Let me take a brief review of the
things done for Ireland during that time. They may be easily
coTinted. First, we made the landlord the tithe-proctor. That
was a right thing to do ; it prevented a great deal of bloodshed,
and an enormous amount of annoyance and disaffection. I only
wish it had been done before it had become practically impossible
to collect the tithes in the old way. But, after all, this was merely
changing the mode of taking something from the Irish people : it
was not taking less. Next, we gave to Ireland a really unsectarian
education. Ireland, long before England, received from us an
elementary education which came down to the lowest grade of the
people ; and by degrees she also obtained unsectarian education in
the higher branches. This is the most solid, and by far the greatest
benefit we have yet conferred upon Ireland : and this, if the pro-

I

114 SPEECH ON MR MAGUIRE^S MOTION

posal of the Government is adopted, we are going in a great measure
to give up. In your difficulties, this is what you are going to throw
over. You are going, in a great measure, to sacrifice the best
thing you have done for Ireland, to save the bad things. The
third thing did more credit to our kindness and generosity than to
our wisdom. It was the £8,000,000 — ultimately amounting to
£10,000,000 — that we gave at the time of the Irish famine, for the
relief of the destitution in that country. Nobody will say that it
was not right to give it ; but I do not think that a people ever
laid out £8,000,000 or £10,000,000 to meet an immediate emer-
gency, in a manner calculated to do so very minute a quantity of
permanent good. We were lavish in the amount that we expended.
We certainly saved many lives — though there were probably a
greater number that we coiild not save — and for that we are entitled
to all credit. In a case of desperate distress there is in this country
no grudging of money. All parties are united in that respect. But
when circumstances obliged us to lay out this great sum, we had an
opportunity of doing permanent good, by reclaiming the waste lands
of Ireland for the benefit of the people of Ireland ; and if we had
done that, we should probably never have heard anything about fixity
of tenure in the shape in which we hear of it now. At that time there
was a sufficient quantity of waste land in Ireland to have enabled ua
to establish a large portion of the Irish population, by their own labour,
in the condition of peasant proprietors of the land which they would
themselves have reclaimed. We lost that opportunity, and we lost
it for ever : because since that time fully one half of all the reclaimable
waste land which existed at the time of Sir Richard Griffith's survey
has been reclaimed ; that is, it has been got hold of by the landlords ;
it has been reclaimed for the landlords, mainly, or very largely, by
the aid of public money lent to them for the purpose. Therefore,
it is no longer possible to produce these great results in Ireland
merely by reclaiming the waste lands. The opportunity lost never
can be regained ; and now, therefore, you are asked to do much
larger, and, as it appears to you, much more revolutionary things.
There is only one more thing that we have done which is worth
mentioning, and that is the Encumbered Estates Act. The Encum-

ON THE STATE OF IRELAND. 115

bered Estates Act was a statesmanlike measure ; it was a measiire
admirably conceived, and excellent, provided it had been combined
with other measures. Even as it was, it was in many respects a
very valuable measure. In the first place, it effected a very great
simplification of title. In the next, it to a great extent liberated
Ireland from the great evil of needy landlords. But there is another
side to the matter. The Act has had another effect, which was not,
I believe, anticipated by anybody, at least to the extent to which it
has been realized. It has shown to Ireland that there might be a
stiU greater evil than needy landlords — namely, grasping landlords.
Those who have bought estates under the Act are, I believe, in the
great majority of cases, much harder landlords than their prede-
cessors ; and naturally so, because they had no previous connexion
with the localities in which the estates they have purchased are
situated. They were strangers — I do not mean to Ireland — ^but
to the neighbourhood of their new properties. Many of them
came from the towns. At all events, they had no connexion with
the tenants, and did not feel that the tenants had any moral claim
upon them, beyond the claim — a claim they ought to have recognised
— which all who are dependent on us have upon us. They bought
the land as a mere pecuniary spectdation, and have very generally ad-
ministered it as a mere speculation. Not unfrequently the first step
they took was to raise the rents to the utmost possible amount, and
in many cases they have ejected tenants because they could not pay
those rents. These, then, are the things that we have done, since
we began to do the best we could, the best we knew how to do, for
Ireland ; and I do not think they are well calculated to remove fi:om
the minds of the Irish people the bitterness which had been pro-
duced by our previous mode of government. Kyou say that there
was nothing bette» to be done, you confess yotir incompetency to
govern Ireland. I maintain that there is no country under heaven
which it is not possible to govern, and to govern in such a way
that it shall be contented. If there was anything better to be done,
and you would not do it, your confession is still worse. But I do
you more justice than you do yourselves. I believe that if small
measures would have sufliced you would have granted them ; and

I 2

lltf SPEECH ON MR MAGUIRE'S MOTION

it is because small measttres will not suffice, because you must havef
large measures, because you must look at the thing on a much
larger scale than you now do, because you must be willing to take
into consideration what you think extravagant proposals — it is
because of that, and not from any want of good intentions, that you
have failed. The present state of Ireland is, I hope, gradually con-
vincing you, if it does not do so all at once, that you must do
something on a much larger scale than you have ever acted upon
before, whether the particidar things proposed to you are the right
things or not. It is under this conviction that I have thought it
my duty not to keep back three-fourths of what I believe to be the
truth in regard to Ireland, for fear of prejudicing minor measures
which the very people who propose them do not expect to produce
any very large results. As to the plan which I have proposed — and
whether hon. gentlemen think that it is right or wrong, surely they
wiU admit that it is good to have it discussed — as to that plan, it seems
necessary that I should in the first place state what it is ; for it does
not appear to have been at all correctly understood by most of those
who have attacked it, and least of all by the noble Lord the Chief
Secretary for Ireland. When I listened to his speech, I did not
recognise my own plan. It is evident that the arduous duties of
his important position had not left him time to read my pamphlet,
and that he had been compelled to trust to the representation of some
one who had given him a very unfaithful account of it. The noble
Lord seemed to think that my plan was that the State should buy
the land from the present proprietors, and re-seU or re-let it to the
tenants. Now, I have said nothing whatever about buying the land.
I should think it extremely objectionable to ma^e that a part of the
plan. I do not want the rent-charge to be bought up by the tenants,
because that would absorb the capital which I Jiope to see them
employ in the improvement of the land. There is another mistake
which seems to have been made pretty generally. Those who have
objected to my proposal have always argued as if I was going to
force perpetuity of tenure on unwilling tenants. I propose nothing of
the sort. There are at present in Ireland a very great number of
tenants who do not pay a ftdl rent. The most improving landlords

ON THE STATE OP IRELAND. 117

are precisely those who are the most moderate in their exactions.
Now, it is an indispensable part of my plan that perpetuity should
only be granted at a full rent — a fair rent, not an excessive, but still a
full rent ; and probably, therefore, many of these tenants will prefer
to remain as they are. They might not do so if they were never to
have another chance of gaining a perpetuity ; but as according to
my plan they would retain the power of claiming a perpetuity at
any future time, on a valuation to be then made, I think it extremely
likely that many would wish to go on as they are. Many landlords,
too, might prefer to arrange amicably with their tenants at something
less than a fall rent, in order to retain the present relations with
them : and these, I believe, would be the best landlords, the most
improving landlords, those who are on the best terms with their
tenants, and whom it is most important to retain in the country.
Many practical objections have been raised to the plan, to all
of which I believe that I have answers; but there is a pre-
liminary question that I should like to ask. Does the House
really wish that these difficulties should be met ? Because
it is very possible that in the minds of hon. gentlemen the question
may be concluded and closed by a preliminary objection ; such, for
instance, as that it is an interference with the rights of property.
If hon. gentlemen are determined by this single circumstance —
if this is enough to make them absolutely resist and condemn the
plan — it is probable that they would be rather sorry than glad if it
is possible to answer the practical objections, and show that the
plan would work ; and in that case I cannot expect to have a very
favourable or very unprejudiced audience when I attempt to
answer them. And then there is another sort of preliminary
objection : that which was made by my right hon. friend the
Member for Calne, in the name of political economy. In my right
hon. friend's mind political economy appears to stand for a particular
set of practical maxims. To him it is not a science, it is not an
exposition, not a theory of the manner in which causes produce
effects : it is a set of practical rules, and these practical rules are
indefeasible. My right hon. friend thinks that a maxim of political
economy if good in England must be good in Ireland. But that i^

im SPEECH ON MR MAGUIRE'S MOTION

like saying that because there is but one science of astronomy, and the
same law of gravitation holds for the earth and the planets, therefore
the earth and the planets do not move in diiferent orbits. So far from
being a set of maxims and rules, to be applied without regard to
times, places, and circumstances, the function of political economy is to
enable us to find the rules which ought to govern any state of circum-
stances with which we have to deal — circumstances which are never
the same in any two cases. I do not know in political economy, more
than I know in any other art, a single practical rule that must be
applicable to all cases ; and I am sure that no one is at all capable of
determining what is the right political economy for any country
until he knows its circumstances. My right hon. friend perhaps
thinks that what is good political economy for England must be
good for India — or perhaps for the savages in the back woods of
America. My right hon. friend has been very plain spoken, and I
will be plain spoken too. Political economy has a great many
enemies ; but its worst enemies are some of its friends, and I do
not know that it has a more dangerous enemy than my right hon.
friend. It is such modes of argument as he is in the habit of em-
ploying that have made political economy so thoroughly unpopular
with a large and not the least philanthropic portion of the people
of England. In my right hon. friend's mind, political economy
seems to exist as a bar even to the consideration of anything that
is proposed for the benefit of the economic condition of any people
in any but the old ways : as if science was a thing not to guide
our judgment, but to stand in its place — a thing which can dis-
pense with the necessity of studying the particular case, and de-
termining how a given cause will operate under its circumstances.
Political economy has never in my eyes possessed this character.
Political economy in my eyes is a science by means of which we
are enabled to form a judgment as to what each particular case
requires ; but it does not supply us with a ready-made judgment
upon any case, and there cannot be a greater enemy to political
economy than he who represents it in that light. I will presume,
therefore, that the House will not be unwilling to allow me to
state what answer I can make to the practical objections to my plan.

ON THE STATE OF IRELAND. 119

First, there is the objection founded upon the sacredness of property.
That is a feeling which I respect. But the sacredness of property is
not violated by taking away property for the public good, if full
compensation is given ; and the interference that I propose is not
more an interference, it is irot even so much an interference, with
property, as taking land for public improvements. Then, too, a
man's right to his property is sacred ; but is not a man's right to
his person stiU more sacred ? And yet no man is allowed to dispose
of his person — in marriage, for instance — except in such way as the
law provides ; nor will it aUow him to relieve himself from the
contract, except on very special grounds, to be decided on by a
Court of Justice. To those hon. gentlemen who are fond of apply-
ing the term confiscation to the plan that I propose, I will say that
I recal them to the English language. I assure them that it is
possible to argue against any proposition, if need be, and to refute
what we think wrong, without altering the meaning of words, by
doing which people only succeed in imposing upon themselves and
others. How can that be confiscation in which the "fisc" instead
of receiving anything, has only to pay; by which no individual
will te the poorer, but many, I hope, a good deal richer ? It may
be otjectionable, but that is a matter of argument ; it may be un-
desirable, because the case may not be deemed strong enough to
require it : but let us fight against opinions from which we difl^er
without extending the war to the English language. I recommend
to hon. gentlemen to be always strictly conservative of the English
tongue. I will now come to arguments of a more practical kind.
I will first mention the strongest argument I have ever heard, either
in tlis House or elsewhere, against my plan — namely, that if we
substitute the Government in the place of the present proprietors,
we shall expose the Grovernment to great difficulties, and make it
stii; more unpopular than it has ever yet been. I have
tw:) answers to make to this objection, and if hon. gentlemen are
net impressed by the one they may perhaps be convinced by
the other. Undoubtedly, if the proposal is not received by the
tenants as a great boon — if they do not think that perpetuity of
tenure on the terms I have suggested is a gift worth accepting, then

120 SPEECH ON MR MAGUIRE'S MOTION

I admit that there is nothing to say in favour of my plan ; it would
be idle to propose it. If, when we offer to the tenantry of Ireland
that which they desire more than anything else in the world — a
perfect security of tenure — the certainty that they will never have
more to pay than they pay at first — ^that everything which their
industry produces shall belong to them alone — if they do not think
that a boon worth having, I have nothing more to say. But this is
a most improbable supposition. A similar prediction was made
about the seris of Russia. Many people said and believed that the
emancipated serfs would never consent to pay rent, especially to
the Government, for land which they had been accustomed to receive
gratis when in their servile condition. That was the general pre-
diction ; but we do not hear that the prediction has been
fulfilled. Everything seems to be going on smoothly, and the serfs,
as far as is knoAvn, pay their rents regularly. This, then, is one
answer. I have another which is more decisive. If it is thought
that it will not do to make the Government a substitute for the land-
lord, I answer that this is an objection affecting only the smalles: part
of my plan — an additional provision, not for the benefit of the tenant,
but for the convenience and consolation of the landlords — that they
should be allowed to receive their rents from the public Treasury.
If, after the rent is converted into a rent-charge, it be thought that
the landlords should, like other rent-chargers, be left to the ordnary
law of the country to collect their dues, by all means leave them to
the ordinary legal remedies. If it be thought injurious to the
public interest to give the proposed consolation to the landbrds,
then do not give it. So falls to the ground a full half of the dis-
sertation of the right hon. Member for Calne on the fatal conse-
quences of the plan. But I must say that I do not believe the land-
lords as a body would wish to exchange their present condition for
that of being mere receivers of dividends from the State. I observe
that those who argue against any plan supposed to be contrary to
the interest of landlords, invariably assume that the landlords are
destitute of every spark of patriotic feeling. I do not think so. I
believe that a large proportion of the landlords would prefer to
retain their connexion with the land ; that they would make private

ON THE STATE OF IRELAND. 121

arrangements with their tenants on terms more favourable to them
y than my plan would give, and that so Ireland would retain a large
proportion of the best class of landlords. Another objection made
against my plan is, that many of the holdings are too small. But
Lord Duflferin states in his pamphlet that the consolidation of small
holdings has ceased — that the number of separate holdings has not
diminished in the last fifteen years. We may conclude from this
that the holdings, generally speaking, are as large as is required by
the present state of the industry and capital of Ireland ; because, if
that were not so, I cannot but believe that the movement of con-
solidation would still be going on. 1 perfectly admit that a great
many tenants hold smaller holdings than could be desired. But if
the holdings are so small that the tenants cannot live on them, and,
at the same time, pay the amount of rent that would be required,
they will soon fall into arrears ; and, if they fall into arrears, it is a
necessary part of my plan that they should be ejected. This would
enable the landlord, if he thought fit, in every case of eviction, to con*
solidate farms ; and whether he did so or not, the consequence would
be the substitution of a better class of tenants. It is part of my plan
that the landlord, if the holding were forfeited by non-payment of the
rent-charge, should choose the tenant's successor, and that the con-
sent of the landlord should be necessary to any sale of the occupier's
interest. Another objection which has been urged is, that in Ireland
lands held on long leases are always the worst farmed. Now, these are
almost always old leases, granted to middlemen. These middlemen
hold the farms at low rents ; but I never heard that they granted
leases at low rents to the sub-tenants ; and who on earth would or
could improve under competition rents ? What interest has a
man in improving, who has promised a rent he can never pay, and
who therefore knows that, lease or no lease, he may be turned out
at any moment? If the farmers have undertaken to pay a rent
equal to double what they make from the land, is it likely that they
will exert themselves to double the produce, merely for the benefit
of the landlord ? One of the most extraordinary circumstances con-
nected with the attack made on my plan by my right hon. friend
the Member for Calne, is that he went on ascribing all manner of

122 SPEECH ON MR MAGUIRE'S MOTION

evil effects to peasant proprietorship, and yet from the beginning
to the end of his speech he never made allusion to any of the argu-
ments in their favour. One would have thought that he had never
heard the common and principal argument, that the sentiment of
property, the certainty that they are working for themselves, is the
most powerful of all incentives to labour and frugality. This is the
universal experience of every country where peasant proprietorship
exists. And this brings me to the noble Lord the Chief Secretary
for Ireland, who gave three reasons why peasant proprietorship ia
not desirable. These reasons were, that it does not prevent revo-
lution, that it does not obviate famine, and that it leads to great
indebtedness on the part of the holders. In regard to the first of
these reasons, the case which the noble Lord appealed to, that of
France, is certainly not in his favour ; for in France the revolutions
have not been made by the peasant proprietors, but by the artizans ;
all that the peasant proprietors have had to do with them being to
put them down. Whether it was right or wrong — whether it was for
good or evil — to substitute the present Government of France for the
Republic, it was the peasant proprietors who did it. As to the co-
existence of great famines and small properties, the noble Lord was
rather unhappy in the instance he gave of East Prussia, for it so
happens that East Prussia is not a country of peasant proprietors,
there being next to no small properties there. It is the Rhine Pro-
vinces of Prussia that are a country of small proprietors, and the
noble Lord did not teU us of any famine there. With reference to
the argument as to the indebtedness of the small proprietors, I
rather think the noble Lord is indebted to me for one instance he
gave — that of the canton of Zurich; but in adducing that in-
stance he omitted to mention the testimony given, by the same
author, to the " superhuman" industry of the peasant proprietors
there. If we take the instance generally appealed to on this subject,
that of France ; M. L^once de Lavergne stated some ten years ago
that the mortgages on the landed property of France did not on the
average exceed "10 per cent of its value, and on the rural property
did not exceed five per cent ; and he estimated the burthen of in-
terest at 10 per cent of the income. He added that these burthens

ON THE STATE OF IRELAND. H3

were not increasing, but diminishing. It is true that this average
is taken from all the landed properties in France, and not solely
from the small properties ; but the large proprietors must be very
unlike other large landed proprietors if their estates are not gene-
rally burthened to a]t least this extent, so that the average is pro-
bably fairly applicable to the small properties. With regard to the
danger of sub-letting, what motive would a tenant have to sub-let ?
He could only sub-let at the rent he himself paid, imless he had in
the meantime improved his holding, and if he had done so he would
have a good right to be allowed to realize his improvements, if he
pleased, by sub-letting at an increased rent. It is thought that
even if he did not sub-let, he would subdivide. But to suppose
that subdivision would be general, is to ignore altogether one of
the strongest motives that can operate on the mind. There is
nothing like the possession of a property in the land by the actual
cultivator, for inspiring him with industry and a desire to accumu-
late. It is not necessary to suppose that this influence woidd
operate on the whole body of tenant proprietors. If it acted only
on one-half, a great deal would be gained. Let hon. gentlemen
consider what an accimiulation of savings there is in the hands of
Irish farmers. I must say that it reflects great credit on the land-
lords of Ireland, taken as a body, that the tenants should have been
able to accumtdate such almost incredible sums as it is admitted that
they have. Well, what is done with these savings ? The farmer
carries them anywhere but to the farm. They are invested in
everything but the improvement of his holding ; showing that the
very landlords through whose forbearance these sums have been
accumulated, are not trusted by the tenants ; or, if they trust the
landlord himself, they do not trust his heir, whom they do not know,
or his creditor who may come into possession, or the stranger to
whom he may be obliged to sell. But under the small proprietary
system, these sums would be brought out and applied to the farms,
and there is enough of them to make aU Ireland blossom like the
rose. Tenants who had given such proof of forethought would be
more likely to provide for their younger sons by buying more land
than by subdividing their own holdings. Moreover, it must be re-

121) SPEECH ON MR MAGUIRE'S MOTION

Inembered that a bridge has now been built to America, over which
the younger sons might cross. According to the testimony of Lord
Dufferin, marriages are already less early in Ireland than they used
to be, and many farmers have become sensible of the disadvantage
of subdividing the small holdings. It may be thought that owing
to the conipetition which exists for land, those who hold at a full
rent might sub-let at an increase, even if they could not sell their in-
terest for a large sum of money. But even if this worst result should
happen, the purchaser would, even then, be in as good a condition
as the Ulster tenant would be in, if the tenant right, which he
enjoys by a precarious custom, were secured to him by law : and
this tenant right, even while resting only on custom, has been
found to give a considerable feeling of security, and some encourage-
ment to improvement. Then I am asked, what my scheme would
do for the agricultural labourers of Ireland ? It would give to
them what is found most valuable in all xioun tries possessing peasant
proprietors — the hope of acquiring landed property. This hope is
what animates the wonderful industry of the peasantry of Flanders,
most of whom have only short leases, but who, because they may
hope, by exertion, to become owners of land, set an example of
industry and thrift to all Europe. My plan is called an extreme
one, but if its principle were accepted, the extent of its application
would be in the hands of the House. Let the House look at the
question in a large way, and admit that rights of property, subject
to just compensation, must give way to the public interest. If the
Commission which I propose were appointed, it would soon find out
what temperaments might be applied in practice. I could myself
suggest many. I would not undertake that I myself would sup-
port them, but the House might. For instance, if it were thought
that the holdings were too small, the holders of all farms below a
certain extent might receive, not a perpetuity at once, but only the
hope of it. Leases might be given to them, and the claim to a
perpetuity miglit be made dependent on their, in the meantime,
improving the land. Again, such a change as I propose is less
required in the case of grazing than of arable land : confine it
then, if you choose, in the first instance, to arable land, dealing

ON THE STATE OF IRELAND. 125

with the purely grazing farms on some other plan, such as that of
buying up such of them as might advantageously be converted into
arable, and re-selling them in smaller lots. It is not an essential
part of the scheme that every tenant should have an actual perpe-
tuity, but only that every tenant who actually tills the soil should
have the power of obtaining a perpetuity on an impartial valuation.
I believe that as the plan comes to be more considered, its difficul-
ties will, in a great measure, disappear, and the House will be more
inclined to view it with favour than at present.

THE END.

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